From news posts, to press releases, to web casts, to blogs, to live video feeds the Internet has created all of these ultra fast media outlets. If you favorite star sneezes, you can almost read about it in enough time to offer them a tissue. Life on the net has become pretty out of control and with the blazing speed of data comes an insatiable appetite for media and info. How much data, news, media do you personally take in daily?, my guess it is pretty substantial. Just when you thought it couldn't go any faster or you couldn't consume more info... may I give you twitter. I have just invested some personal time into twitter, and OK yes I could be slightly behind the bell curve for you techies that were tweet'ng ages ago. But now I am in, and discovering what is valid or invalid in my new all consuming media world.
What is
twitter, it is an almost real time micro blog 140 characters to be exact of what someone is currently doing. So when your reading about someone making toast, they are actually making it. Ok yes toast isn't exactly exciting, at least for me, but it is exciting when someone is at a race, or an event, or doing something that only they or a select few would have access to. You get an inside scoop directly from the person with the "inside scoop" all access pass. So pretty cool huh.
I happen to like motorcycle racing in (motocross/supercross primarily) all forms. So James Stewart (a.k.a js7) the #7
Team San Manuel Yamaha rider and current Supercross champion has a tweet
@js7. He lets you know what he is doing, how his life is going, what events he is participating in, he posts photos, asks questions of his fans etc. (all access pass type stuff). Pretty cool if your a fan and want more info on your favorite rider. Lance Armstrong is doing something similar with his
@lancearmstrong tweet, I heard he is doing this to speak directly his fans and give interviews and insight directly from him, rather than get skewed quotes and stories showing up in the press. With his tweet he keeps you up to date with where he is training or racing, what he listens to on his
iPod, bits about his family (he just had a son Max Armstrong), news about
Livestrong his charity and insight into cycling from one of the best. Once again pretty cool if your a fan of cycling. So that is one aspect, a direct link and info about your favorite ???? (insert celeb, athlete, or racer etc.)
A new thing I just experience was up to the second race info from various people that work in their respective jobs in the motorcycle industry,
@racerxonline covering the
Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross championship and
@ShenziRubani covering
AMA Superbike & Supersport Racing for AGV/
Dainese race support effort and last but not least Steve Matthes,
@pulpmx covering Rd#1 of the
Canadian motocross nationals. So this is the cool part, on my iPhone, in realtime I am getting updates from individuals at the races from their POV (point of view) and their experience. Global race coverage at the tip of your fingers, real time on your phone, really doesn't get much better than that for now. I just might be a sucker for technology and racing, but only in 2009 can this happen, the world has officially changed. (I realize this is an understatement) The twitter thing isn't for everyone and you definately have to explore various users posts to find whats valuable to you, but if you enjoy consuming media, this is pretty ground breaking stuff. Have fun and send me your tweet to
@jhn145 if you have one.
