I stumbled upon “Breaking Tweets”, an independent news website featuring world news "twitter-style", a few weeks ago and I was adamant to write about it. When I first heard about twitter, I was extremely skeptical of the whole concept. We already update our status on facebook, twitter is yet another time-waster and another social networking tool that will definitely encourage us to single-handedly invade our own privacy.
“ I’m never joining Twitter,” I declared to my friends. Then, my father joined twitter and invited me to follow him and my sister joined twitter and became an active user and I was left out of the loop.
I became interested in Twitter mainly after the Iranian elections. The way the elections were covered by bloggers and Iranian twitter users and the way twitter was portrayed as a credible source by international news agencies.
Since some journalists were arrested and many TV channels were blocked in Iran, Iranians used twitter to communicate with the outside world and to voice out their concerns.
Twitter’s idea is simple. It is free and very quick. The messages you write spread really fast. When an American student was arrested in Cairo a few years ago, he sent one word using twitter and this word “arrested” was read by a friend who contacted the US embassy and he was helped in a very short time.
According to the founders, the website seeks to
1. Put a personal touch and human voice on news events around the world
2. Help people enhance their worldview or perspective of global events
3. Increase dialogue about international news both on this site and on Twitter
The website is not concerned with spreading breaking news as much as chronicling daily news and collecting the views of twitter-users on certain events.
"Sudan is not really a country at all, but many. A composite layers, like a genetic fingerprint of memories that were once fluid, but have since crystallized out from the crucible of possibility" Jamal Mahjoub, a Sudanese novelist
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