News networks take note - you’re being scooped by Twitter. Yesterday I first found out about former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination not on CNN - but from Twitters in Pakistan.

Literally within minutes of the initial attack and then Bhutto’s death being announced, Twitters were chattering about it, linking to sources and getting the news out. In fact they got the jump on CNN so fast that the term “CNN Breaking News” is a bit misleading.

Sorry to break this to you CNN but the news has already been broken - by a Pakistani with an internet-enabled laptop and a Twitter account.

By the time the traditional news networks finally get their version of the story out, it’s already spread like wildfire across Twitter with people discussing it and linking to it.    In fact it has the potential to spread so fast that a misleading version of a story can be repeated in countless places before a rebuttal can be issued.    But nevertheless, this is the future of news reporting - as soon as you cough or scratch your nose, someone with a Twitter account is talking about it.

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