Twitter - news reporting large and small

By Bob Toovey - 04 December 2009

I don't think many people doubt that Twitter is here to stay and will form an important part of social networking. But is it any good for news – gathering and dissemination?

MSNCB thinks is must be...

A Twitter feed set up by a Dutch teenager as a hobby has been taken over by Microsoft news channel MSNBC.com.

The BreakingNews feed, operated by BNO News and set up by 19-year-old Michael van Poppel two years ago, was handed to MSNBC.com on December 1.

The feed delivers breaking news to more than 1.5m readers.

This is from the BBC article, MSNBC.com takes over Breaking News Twitter feed

Just wondering how much money was involved in that deal.

For a smaller scale and closer to Citizen Journalism comes this small piece of news, again from the BBC...

A teacher has been appointed as the "tweeter in residence" for a County Durham town.

Mike McTimoney will use the networking website Twitter - updates on which are called tweets - to keep people abreast of news and events in Darlington.

From Town appoints resident 'tweeter'

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