Twitter To Capitalize On Breaking News From Local Media

As one of the most accessible tools for spreading information fast and with ease, Twitter has always had its fingers on the pulse of news in every corner of the country. Recently, the social network had decided to capitalize on that capacity even more by basically highlighting breaking news from local media entities.

As confirmed by BuzzFeed News, Twitter has formed a partnership with local outlets as was prominently displayed yesterday following the mass shooting in Florida. The microblogging platform streamed live coverage of the incident by the WSVN 7 network in Miami, which provided many who didn’t have access to TVs the opportunity to stay up to date on the events.

Kayvon Beykpour, the video lead at Twitter told the online publication that the platform was trying to “surface credible and relevant information to help people stay informed.” This would certainly go a long way towards clearing up false information that may be spreading on the social network by people who only need to type in a few characters.

Aside from the major aspect of covering a tragic incident from the perspective of those who are actually on the scene, this move is also in stark contrast to what Facebook is doing. While Mark Zuckerberg’s company is trying to step away from the news and essentially wants to keep users in their own little bubbles, Twitter wants to step right into it.

As The Verge notes, local media outlets often have the most reliable capabilities of delivering the facts, even more so than national entities. By prominently featuring their coverage via live streaming, Twitter ensures that only the most factual and most accurate information is delivered to users.

This is massively different compared to what has been going on in Facebook and other social media sites, where articles and posts from every random blog can be considered on the same level as that of actual news outlets. This could actually increase Twitter’s user count if handled properly.