Categories: OLD Media Moves

Tech journalists who do, and don't, twitter

Charles Cooper of CNET decided to see what tech reporters used social networking software Twitter, and which ones didn’t.

Cooper writes, “I included names of some online reporters — including colleagues from CNET as well as TechCrunch — but in the main, the list is comprised of people employed by A-list newspapers and periodicals.

“I don’t pretend to have come up with a statistically representative list. Call it my weekend science experiment. What’s more, some people may have crossed me up by hiding behind pseudonyms. Truth be told, I only changed my ‘coopeydoop’ handle to ‘Charles Cooper’ on Saturday after realizing it made searching for me on Twitter that much harder. So, apologies in advance if I inadvertently lumped anyone in with the wrong list.

“Out of the 55 names I randomly came up with, 13 were found on Twitter while the remainder were missing in action. When I pinged one of the reporters asking why — sorry, names of the innocent are being withheld — here’s what he answered:

“‘I don’t have a Twitter account, because I think it’s silly,’ the answer came back. ‘Twitter is lame.’

“OK, but my guess is that by year’s end, most of the folks on the holdout list will get with the program. Not because it’s necessarily an elegant system–I’m keeping my pet list of Most Needed Improvements on the service if any of the Twitter folks is interested. Rather, it’s a question of self-interest. News often breaks on Twitter before it hits blogs. And companies are paying attention to what comes over the transom.”