Most users have known Twitter’s breaking-news capability is almost immediate, ever since the Mumbai attacks of November ‘08, but mainstream media is slowly catching on. Proven again tonight, Twitter is the first on the scene for breaking news, at least in first-world countries. But in the latest major Twitter-trending incident of a plane crash in the Netherlands, was it a Twitter user who actually broke the story? Did it complement the accurate reporting of the incident or hinder/compete with it?

Just minutes after the crash of Turkish Air Flight 1951 at Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport, @nipp was… tweeting, from the scene. (There really should be a more serious term for that when the event might involve numerous deaths) It was 10:39 AM local time.

One of the earliest tweets I can find on the incident was at 10:32 AM local time, from user @M0rrighan, simply: “airline incident at Schipol airport.” (As roughly translated from Dutch) No info on where she heard it – although I can try to ask when the dust around her settles. User @lrs later posted one of the first photos by @diederikm as he was driving by. @nipp, who I’m assuming was living, driving or working nearby when the crash happened, was within “a few hundred meters” of the downed plane. First reactions were that the plane looked “shredded” and in “very bad condition.” Ambulances didn’t arrive until minutes later, and clearly nobody could’ve gathered any details before the initial tweets started rolling in. @nipp claimed he could see nothing from his viewpoint, and called bullshit on channels like CNN for reporting any figures on casualties.

But sure enough, as is the inaccurate nature of any breaking news, seemingly sourceless figures were streaming in. Initial reports from @BreakingNewsOn, which appears to be an independent start-up, claimed “dozens dead and injured.”

The claims from other users later narrowed to 7 deaths. Nearly an hour later, the figure fluctuated from 7 to 9, to none.  Media outlets like the BBC were attempting to gather facts, but they were sourced from eyewitnesses who claimed to see “bodies under white sheets.”  We may learn our news from the Twitterverse first, but the facts we accept are still confirmed by journalists. I doubt the twitterverse will mature to the point that it is independently confirming information with officials like a traditional news outlet, but the community has surprised us before.

By now it’s hard to tell who was the first to actually post news of the crash, how they heard about it, and how the news spread through the twitterverse. At the time of reporting, @nipp was a relatively low-key user, with only 30 updates and a few dozen followers. (At the time of posting he now has over 700) So even if he was the first on scene, we could assume the people who would’ve seen his first report within the first few minutes of the incident must have been few. Location-based features may have contributed to his tweet’s spread, as his message at 10:36 AM was soon RT’d by users like @jaapstronks, who currently has 1,485 followers. If he had nearly that many at the time of the RT, @nipp’s exposure may have exploded. @BreakingNewsOn caught onto the story and sent their first tweet to their 28,384 followers at 10:46 AM, a full seven minutes later. It appared to be another 10 minutes after that before we started seeing Breaking News scrollers on the BBC News site. So it’s unclear whether the twitterverse actually broke the story, but at least the news reached thousands more people in Twitter, in the same time it took for major media to post the news on their sites.

The twitterverse did gain some more mainstream recognition for its reporting. WCVB Boston posted a brief story soon after details emerged, crediting Twitter users as being first on the scene:

“A photo shown by the NOS showed the plane in three pieces in a muddy field. It doesn’t appear that the plane caught fire after the crash. Allowing anyone who could to simply walk out the holes in the plane. Passengers and passers by used Twitter to report the crash and upload pictures moments after it crash, long before local media.”

@nipp, at least, was impressed.

Soon after his reporting, @nipp claims to have received numerous calls from TV and radio stations, proving Twitter first-responders can be valuable assets to the media who track Twitter trends.

The functions of the twitterverse in the news cycle are manifesting constantly. It’s a great tool for eyewitness reports and gathering quick community opinions – see the anchor I love to hate @ricksanchezcnn for more on that – but can the twitterverse ever really be the first on scene? In other words, if a tweet is posted on the interwebs and there are only a few dozen people to hear it, how long does it take to… make a sound? Perhaps not long at all. It’s the accuracy that hinders Twitter from growing independent from traditional news sources. If anything, Twitter is still a complement to major media, not a competitor.

No reliable facts could be compiled from rampant re-tweets, or even @nipp’s eyewitness reports after hundreds of emergency crew members descended on the crash site. So that value of speed is circumstantial – hearing unconfirmed reports about a plane crash 4 minutes earlier than normal probably won’t change anything, perhaps least of all cable news ratings. For now, we’ll still have to rely on traditional media entities for our facts, and holistic interpretations of news stories.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo

An animator’s thesis project for the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.

Whenever there’s a car chase in LA, the media is on it within minutes, cutting into broadcasts and throwing their news choppers in the air to record every exciting second. It’s sad really, but we’d be hypocrites to throw so much blame on the media over this obsession when we see commoners do much the same when given the chance… on Twitter.

Soon after a low-speed, 3-hour chase of a White Bentley in North Hollywood began Tuesday night, up popped the tags, and at least one new twitter account. Twitter trends spread fastest when there’s a celebrity tweeter with thousands of followers involved, rebroadcasting the news. I heard it from @oliviamunn, who said she could hear the choppers from her house. Read more »

Sure as rain, nearly as soon as Christian Bale’s 3-and-a-half-minute tirade against Terminator: Salvation’s director of photography dropped on the interwebs, a Twitter account was created in his honor.

For nearly 10 hours today, @fnchristianbale has been kicking Twitter users off the set, asking what the fuck is it with them, and declaring that they’re done professionally.  Listen to the clip via the link at the end of the post.

Now that media outlets, politicians, major brands/celebrities are on Twitter, its power to bring the world down to one level of communication is seemingly limitless.  

Mr. Tweet, a “Twitter networking assistant,” has been conducting surveys of its users, asking them how long they think it will be until Twitter goes mainstream, but it appears to me that it already has. (And 33% of responders agree)  Dell offers Twitter-only deals, Virgin America builds the carrier’s brand base, and Shaq documents his meets with favorite fans.  There are hundreds of other examples, and new accounts starting every day.  So what can’t this service accomplish?  Well… becoming profitable.  They’re still figuring that part out.

Christian Bale flips out on Terminator: Salvation set

I caught most of these ads the night before online, and these are the few – very, very few – that stuck with me.  Hulu’s was the first, just because of the modicum of truth in it.  Mushy mush.

More after the jump. Read more »