Google stands up to China, but Twitter is the big winner
The world of digital and social media was rocked on Tuesday night when the Internet search engine giant Google announced that it would no longer be censoring its search results in China, and may pull out of the country altogether in response to ‘a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China’.
This extraordinary move was explained on Google’s blog and has led to intense discussion and speculation about the rationale and impact of the decision.
Although Google’s stance has been widely praised by many in the digital and social media industries, there have also been questions raised regarding the timing of the announcement and whether it was motivated by business as opposed to ethical concerns.
However, there is one incidental aspect of the story that has been largely ignored – namely the role of Twitter.
Twitter has been banned in China since June 2009. However the power of Twitter was brought home to me as I sat at home with my laptop open and one eye on BBC News 24 as the story began to break. Earlier that evening I had witnessed Twitter beat the mainstream media to report the news of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Once again, it was on Twitter that I saw the first few stories emerging about Google’s statement on China.
About 5-6 minutes later, BBC News 24 flashed up the Google story as “Breaking News”. Their treatment of it consisted of the studio newsman stumbling his way through Google’s blog post trying to pick out the salient points live on air (while complaining that it was a very long message). However, by this time I had already read two or three blog posts via Twitter that not only linked to the full announcement, but also contained some analysis and comment.
Thirty seconds later and the BBC had rightly moved back to the far bigger news story unfolding in Haiti. Meanwhile on Twitter I was able to continue to track the responses to the Google story alongside news about Haiti, as well as a range of other topics that are of interest to me. I was also able to engage in dialogue with others who were reacting to the news as it happened.
The contrast between the watching mainstream news media handle the Google story, and experiencing it in ‘real time’ via Twitter could not have been greater. Twitter was not only faster, it enabled me to discover a multitude of information, and engage with different people and perspectives in a way that broadcast channels cannot compete with. Ironically, it was also the medium used by Google itself, who tweeted the message immediately after posting the statement on their blog.
So while others focus on Google and the implications of their move, for me Twitter was the unsung hero, and the big winner of the night.
You can follow me on twitter here: @JonAkwue
Image courtesy of Thaths @ Flickr
