Social Media Magnifies News Reporting"s Reach

An interesting thing about social media is that it has the power of transmitting news and information across a large spectrum of the population in a very short period of time.
With the advent and rapid expansion of the Internet people are no longer tied to their cable television or radio for news and updates.
Furthermore, as an increasing number of people are going online and spending more of their daily time on the Internet, the online community is growing and is fast becoming a compelling place to exchange information and ideas.
This community is well informed, educated and are extremely opinionated.
Sharing information on the Internet has become a lot easier with the advent of sites such as Twitter, Digg and Facebook.
With the latest launch of Google+ the Internet community has more than one powerful way to disseminate information to their family and friends.
A recent case in the point is the flood of information that was shared on Twitter and Facebook by the online community regarding the movements of the recent UK riots.
Friends would send updates on Twitter or messages on the walls of their friends about impending problems and thereby warn their loved ones from venturing out.
It was hard to imagine a decade ago that the common man would to be able to transmit information and share opinions and even influence others in such a rapid and wide-spread manner.
Trending news released by traditional media such as television is quickly picked up by the Internet media and then by the bloggers who have considerable influence through their opinionated writings.
Bloggers are experts in their line of trade or profession and often share their experience and opinions through their blogs.
These are well read, followed, debated and discussed.
Blogs are thus one of the prime sources for interpretation of news and information.
They often provide more content than the traditional media and news sites when it comes to news interpretation.
Social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook are the ones that create the maximum buzz when it comes to dissemination of information on the Internet.
These sites have a large and active audience base.
This means a small new story can easily get shared over and over again thus creating a snowball effect till it becomes top news.
The power of the social media is thus realized as a medium for sharing news, views and popular opinions.