As we continue to rely more and more on social media to deliver us the latest and greatest breaking news. I figured I would take the time to rank the various social media profiles that I utilize on my mobile device to consume breaking news. The rankings are based solely on my own personal options and how I consume the media. I would love to hear what you have to say so please leave a comment below.
Twitter is my top social media choice when I am looking to discover the latest breaking news.
When it comes to timely news, Twitter is king for me. In the past year, some of the major news events that I first discovered on Twitter included the death of Joe Paterno, the rise of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and also pretty much every major technology announcement as I follow a lot of tech companies 
. The latest enhancements to the Twitter UI in the iPhone app allows users to quickly and easily discover trending content, see thumbnails and intros to trending stories, and also provides suggestions for who to follow all conveniently provided on one of the lower navigation elements. As Twitter continues to evolve, I will continue to utilize it to as I look to discover the latest news from around the globe.
As Facebook continues to evolve, I find myself utilizing it for breaking news consumption more and more. With the continued development of the pages features within Facebook, I find that more and more companies are utilizing the framework more effectively to announce news worthy items. Additionally, I think that Facebook is more intelligently grouping relevant stories in your news feed view. As a result, I am not only consuming more media through Facebook, but often it is because one (or several) of my friends consumed it or posted about it on their walls. With Facebook’s massive reach due to their immense user base, I believe we will continue to see enhancements that bring users back to their profiles more frequently to consume the latest breaking news.
At the start of this story, I said I was ranking social sites in terms of how I access them for timely news delivery. When I look at LinkedIn in terms of it’s timeliness of news, I have it ranked behind both Facebook and Twitter. However, if my rankings were to focus on the quality of the content that I get through the social media source delivering the news, LinkedIn would come in on top. Even though I don’t rely on LinkedIn for the latest breaking news, I have always relied on the site to give me well written and researched pieces that my peers have shared in through the business focused social networking platform. Recent enhancements to streamline news shared by those I follow have given LinkedIn some promise to continue to evolve into a top social platform in terms of news discovery.
- Honorable Mention = Google Plus & Reddit
I haven’t fully succumb to utilizing Google Plus on a regular basis. However with Google’s recent inclusion of Google Plus posts into search results, you can’t deny the framework is there for the Search Engine Giant to utilize their emerging social media platform as a way to break news through both the platform and their search results.
For Reddit, I do love it. I believe for many people this would most likely represent the number one source for breaking news. I just don’t look to it enough to find the latest breaking news, but I do know a lot of others who do.
