Tweeted Out

I don't really care to, but let's talk about Twitter for a few minutes.

Twitter is a social networking Internet sensation that relays information from one of its millions of users to everyone else that is a follower of that person -- as long as it is less than 140 characters.

Is twitter a good thing then?

I say no. Why?

Because any idiot who knows how to spell and type can put something online and claim it to be true.

Take me as a real life example.

I don't use twitter, but I do use facebook (which, as far as I'm concerned, is just twitter with pictures). A few weeks back I posted a status update from the opening of a Notorious B.I.G song entitled "Juicy," where Biggie dedicates the album (Ready to Die, 1997) to teachers "who told me I'd never amount to nothin'," and to the people who apparently "called the cops on me when I was just trying to make some money to feed my daughter."

Proof that social networking like facebook and twitter are useless.

I didn't drop out of high school and no teachers told me I wouldn't amount to anything. I don't know what it's like to have my neighbors call the cops on me because I'm "hustlin'." And I certainly don't have a daughter to feed. I know nothing of life in the projects.

So why take my word for it?

"But ... it's on facebook!"

And now you have the Tiger Woods ordeal.

Twitter reports have been coming out since Thanksgiving Day and everyone has a different story. Essentially, twitter is like an online hen house for millions of people to gab it up.

How much of the Tiger situation do we know to be actual truth?

Some feeds say his wife chased him with a golf club. Others that he was drunk or going to see his mistress.

So how can people tell the difference between actual reporting and gossip?

Start with the source.

If I wanted to real low-down on this whole Tiger Woods situation, I would probably trust espn.com golf columnist Jason Sobel before I trusted my cousin who lives in Florida. Sobel has credibility as a golf writer. Holland just lives in Florida and goes to high school.

However, if Holland could somehow tweet a direct quote he got from Tiger about the accident it could be played off as just a kid talking trash on his twitter account.

This media can reach readers who don't know the difference between gossip and reporting, but in the end it's really all up to the person.

If they choose to believe Rick Reilly's twitter page over Sobel's if they both report on Woods, then that is their choice.

The media can't tell a person what to believe just like they can't tell that person how to live their life. It is the media's job to relay information.

The interpretation of that information is all on the reader.

I'm not saying Twitter is all bad. It can be used for "good."

Take the elections in Iran last year. Twitter was a huge hit after the country banned facebook in order to silence the protests of the rigged election. Via twitter, the rest of the world got first-person accounts of what was happening in the hostile country.

Twitter made it impossible for the Iranian government to spin what was happening there.

So chalk one up for twitter.