John C. Dvorak put out a Marketwatch article this weekend that attempts to debunk the prevailing opinion that Twitter is a legitimate source of news. He breaks down his second opinion into seven major points, which I’ll try to summarize and rebut here.

1) Elephant Syndrome: There’s an Indian fable about three blind men and an elephant. John thinks here that there are simply two few characters allowed in a Tweet to give legitimate reports.

The problem with this criticism is that it assumes that the only way to view Twitter is by looking at the public timeline or by looking at what your friends are saying.  There are as many ways to view the output coming out of Twitter as you can imagine.  We listed seven ways to view reports and analysis of what was coming across Twitter from Iran last week – and the ways to do so have multiplied since then. Beyond that, there are a lot of interesting things being done with advanced real-time analysis, including what’s being done in our own SiliconANGLE Labs.

2) Unvested Reporters: Bloggers are insipid and can’t give any sort of helpful analysis.

The irony is that John C. Dvorak is a blogger himself. That he tries to advance this idea is pretty funny.

3) Vulnerable to Manipulation: Similar to the old Wikipedia argument, because anyone can post, Twitter can be gamed. Conspiracies can be hatched. Untruth can become truth.

I don’t think that anyone will dispute that Twitter is vulnerable to manipulation. What is apparent, though, is that it’s not outside the realm of possibility to get good information on a consistent basis. If you don’t have the time to, yourself, use your best judgment as applied to what you see come across from aggregators, turning to trusted analyzers in your social graph or reading lists is another way to get the manipulation filtered out.

4) Hoaxes and Goofballs: GenMay, 4chan, and Anonymous – they’re pranksters, and everything could be an elaborate hoax.

I think it’s interesting to note that 4chan, Anonymous and Fark are leading the way in reaching out to censored Iranians. I think even the pranksters know when it’s funny and when it’s important to be serious.

5) Lack of Access: It’s just people with mobile cameraphones.  Useful for taking pictures. It’s good for exposing police brutality, and that’s it.

This is a myopic view of things – it would almost not bear rebuttal if it weren’t so easy to rebut. Sure the casual user doesn’t have access to spokespersons and official events, but that’s what we have bloggers for.  High profile bloggers and other forms of journalists will always get wind of the major events.  The crowd is there for the news where it’s impossible to otherwise have feet on the ground.

Put another way, saying Twitter is useless for getting it’s users access to high profile events is like saying the President sucks at supporting customer service on a DSL connection, or a hammer’s no good for unscrewing a lightbulb.  Simply put – it’s not the President’s (nor the hammer’s) job to do so.

6) Lack of Analysis: Again, Twitter’s limitations make it impossible for real analysis to be feasible.

Again – it’s a situation of the right tools for the right job.  I feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but apparently when someone as intelligent as John C. Dvorak is unclear on the concept, it needs to be said.

Simply put, you won’t find a 1000 word analysis essay or thought piece in 140 characters.  It can’t happen.

What can happen is a link to a 1000 word analysis essay on Twitter.  I actually found the link to John’s piece on Twitter. Thus – his point is moot.

7) Skewed Priorities: He links to another article on MarketWatch by Dave Callaway on the ego-centricity of Twitter.

Ego-centricity is the basis of all news reporting – what matters to me or to my audience.. this is the basis for all journalism.

All in all, I find more and more that the arguments being thrown up by folks primarily based in the Heritage Media to be frantic last stands – they can’t understand that process journalism is being replaced by something superior.

No, Twitter isn’t the end-all be-all of New Media, but it’s an important component, and it eliminates the last best argument that Heritage Media had going for it, namely that they alone had the budgets to keep feet on the ground in remote locations.

We know that to now no longer be true.

[img credit: (CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.]