Twitter's Latest Experiement Parrots Breaking News
My mom gets CNN Breaking News Alerts to her phone via text message. Often, it's incredibly helpful, especially when we were going through Hurricane Sandy last year. In the world of constant connection, breaking news can come from all kinds of sources: CNN News Alerts through text or email, Facebook and Twitter updates from news outlets, and much more.
But Twitter is experimenting with a new way to get breaking news to its users: an account called @EventParrot. Followers of the @EventParrot account will receive a direct message (not a Tweet) when breaking news is released. The direct message will summarize the story and link users to the Twitter page of whichever news outlet the story came from.
In order to receive the breaking news as a text, the user can configure their account to alert them via text message when they receive the Twitter direct message. Easy enough. I also think it's neat that it will seemingly compile news stories from all news outlets across the world; the picture in the initial post about it shows direct messages featuring stories from CNN and BBC. Now, instead of subscribing to many news outlets, you can follow @EventParrot and have stories from all over the world sent right to your phone.
While it's still in the initial phases of use, I'm sure @EventParrot will become a very useful source for getting the news of the world. I'm not the kind of person who subscribes to news updates, but for those of you who are, check out @EventParrot and see what it's all about.
[EDIT]: I was actually thinking that this same kind of system could be used in other ways. For example, a company could create a private Twitter account and direct message employees who utilize the system with updates, news, and alerts relevant to the company. We'll see what happens!
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