The new news cycle
Right now, every news outlet in America is covering the fact that Steve Jobs has taken a medical leave of absence from Apple. It is the biggest news this week, and probably will be affecting Apple for months.
That's not interesting. What is interesting is how the news of his stepping down spread. Sitting here in a Starbucks in Brooklyn, working in Photoshop and TextMate, I think I just witnessed the new news cycle.
1. THE SOURCE Steve fired off his email to Apple employees just after the closing bell.
2. THE SOCIAL COMPONENT One of the employees tweeted about it (actually, in this case, they posted it to friendfeed).
3. THE SOCIAL BROADCASTER Robert Scoble, who has tentacles attached to every piece of the internet, saw this news and retweeted it notifying 30,000 people.
4. THE INSTANT WIRE BreakingNewsOn Heard the story, contacted their sources, and tweeted a link to the full text of the letter.
4. TRADITIONAL CYCLE From here, the traditional news cycles found the news and published, a full 15 minutes after the email was sent.
Pieces 1-4 did not exist two years ago. I see a revolution happening. Let's jump on it.
Print is dead.
1 comment
Jan 14, 2009
Sachin Agarwal said...
So sad. I hope Steve is ok. Apple will never be the same without him.It's actually pretty scary. What other company is doing software that is actually elegant and beautiful?
