Publish First, Filter Later

As Clay Shirky puts it in his book, publishing has remained expensive and there were restraints on filtering. Printing a newspaper, magazine, etc. required publishing first, and filtering later. Throughout his book, Shirky discusses the power of the Internet with the use of its social media applications and tools. Web sites such as YouTube, LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, and others allow people to publish FOR FREE. The publication costs that are required for publishing news and information in the traditional sense aren't necessary for publishing on the Internet.

This is where microblogging comes into play.

Twitter allows us to publish information in 140 characters or less that can be seen as news. Ever since I have been using Twitter, I have been receiving information as it comes in. Instead of using conventional forms of journalism, like the broadcast media Shirky mentions, I can log onto Twitter and see what's been going on. The new social media applications that we all use are the new way of sharing that Shirky is referring to.

With the tools and the information in our hands, we can all share news and information through different means. It's been getting easier to share this information throughout the world. Why not embrace it?