October 15th, 2009 
weswilson4 
Six-year-old boy flies thousands of miles over Colorado in runaway balloon.
The headline is pretty gripping (even though it turned out the boy wasn’t inside.) There are some breaking news situations that spread like wildfire through social media sites… Miracle on the Hudson, Michael Jackson’s death and what’s became known as “Balloon Boy.”
How did you hear the news? Facebook? Twitter? A news alert emailed to your inbox? We are now able to find out breaking news mere moments after it happens. When something goes viral across all media — including social media — you know about it very quickly.
I found out about the story from a friend on Facebook. That friend posted a link to CNN.com. I clicked there and went to CNN’s live coverage online, watching the balloon speed over Colorado’s plains.
I logged onto Twitter, where “Balloon Boy” or a reference to the balloon took up seven of the 10 top trending spots. Entertainment bloggers, sports bloggers, technology bloggers… everyone was talking about this kid. The compelling video and pictures captivated everyone. Many passed along the crazy story; many more prayed for the safety of the child believed to be on board.
I texted and called a few friends to tell them to turn on the television, and I turned the TV on myself as the balloon started to land. Had I been on the go, I could have simply watched the balloon touch down from live video on my iPhone. In the span of a few short hours, I used nearly every medium available to me to find more on this story or pass along the news.
Friends replace common news sources
TV stations, newspapers and the traditional media are no longer the primary source for my breaking news; my friends fill that role. Think about how many people on Twitter and Facebook first heard about the news from friends and then retweeted or forwarded that news along to many more other friends. My friends broke the news and then I turned to traditional news stations to find out more about the story as it happened.
Once I turned CNN on, the purpose of social media morphed from news breaker to conversation setter. It gives everyone an avenue to express their thoughts, their concerns and join a larger conversation about the captivating event. I was talking to a friend on the phone about the story while tweeting and reading my friends’ responses.
As far as journalism goes, this is the real power of social media. It’s part of the reason why CNN was so smart to add iReporter functions to its iPhone app. CNN can’t be everywhere at once, but its millions of viewers can be. A smart reporter can also use things like Twitter to quickly alert followers to breaking news that they typically will hear about first through wires or phone calls from the newsroom. The Twitter retweet can be a great tool to show that you’re on top of a story or many times that you are the first one to break a story. Only the journalists themselves actually care if the dateline on their website beats the dateline on another website’s homepage.
Think about this: Viewers are more apt to remember who they heard the story from first as opposed to who reported it first.
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I found out about the Balloon Boy incident from the CNN iPhone App. Couldn’t believe CNN sent me an alert for that story, but whatever. It is pretty amazing how fast it spread. I like this part from your story, and I think it sums up the power of social media pretty well: “CNN can’t be everywhere at once, but its millions of viewers can be. “