Guardian editor-in-chief sets out 15 things Twitter does effectively

I’ve lost count of the times people – including a surprising number of colleagues in media companies – roll their eyes at the mention of Twitter. “No time for it,” they say. “Inane stuff about what twits are having for breakfast. Nothing to do with the news business.”

Here, off the top of my head, are 15 things, which Twitter does rather effectively and which should be of the deepest interest to anyone involved in the media at any level.

1) It’s an amazing form of distribution

2) It’s where things happen first

3) As a search engine, it rivals Google

4) It’s a formidable aggregation tool

5) It’s a great reporting tool

6) It’s a fantastic form of marketing

7) It’s a series of common conversations. Or it can be

8) It’s more diverse

9) It changes the tone of writing

10) It’s a level playing field

11) It has different news values

12) It has a long attention span

13) It creates communities

14) It changes notions of authority

15) It is an agent of change

Moreover, I’m simply using Twitter as one example of the power of open, or social media. Twitter may go the way of other, now forgotten, flashes in the digital pan. The downside of Twitter also means that the full weight of the world’s attention can fall on a single unstable piece of information. But we can be sure that the motivating idea behind these forms of open media isn’t going away and that, if we are blind to their capabilities, we will be making a very serious mistake, both in terms of our journalism and the economics of our business. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk