By Joanne Lee
Straits Times Online Editor
joannel@sph.com.sg

 

SO call us Johnny-come-lately (or, in this case, Jenny-come-lately), but The Straits Times has decided to experiment with Twitter.

After the Aware EOGM saga last Saturday, when two ST reporters blogged live onsite at Suntec City during the marathon seven-hour meeting, the power of micro-blogging really hit home.

Twitter basically allows you to send short updates (under 140 characters not unlike SMS text messages) to the public (if you don't lock your account) or just to your friends (if you do).

Obama used it to great effect in the initial phases of his presidential election campaign to reach out to the usually apathetic youth voters.

Then during the Mumbai terror attacks at the end of last year, it gained a lot more media attention as traditional broadcasters started turning to what people were "twittering" from the ground on what they heard was going on.

Then, last Saturday, the allure of Twitter went BOOM in Singapore as attendees of the Aware EOGM "tweeted" almost verbatim blow-by-blow accounts on what was being said (or rather, shouted).

For example, that evening, about six of us were having dinner at Vivocity - a prelude to the 8:30pm screening of Wolverine. While shovelling down our food with one hand, practically all of us were on various Twitter applications on our phones on our other hands, reading what was going on.

Apart from #awaresg, a dedicated channel for tweeters to post their tweets to, we also had two friends who were busily twittering from the meeting as well. It got to a point where the latest tweet on all our phones read "New guard has five minutes to step down" and had us all with ants in our pants. (Probably as edgy as those on location themselves.)

Hurry up! We want to know the outcome! Wolverine is starting in 15 minutes!

It took another half hour before the "new guard" resigned, but thankfully, we were still watching advertisements and movie trailers at the time, so our short outburst reacting to the outcome didn't elicit any shushing from other movie watchers.

After that experience, we've decided to go ahead and experiment if twittering will get news out to our readers more immediately and efficiently. For now, we're starting with publishing the links to our blogs and top stories, and we hope you enjoy the ride.

Oh, and we'll try not to spam your account, don't worry!

Add "stcom" to your Twitter account to get the updates. (Hint: Use the "Find People" or "Search" functions on your Twitter readers to locate us. See you there!)