Cassy Hayes and Jasmine Coleman were among the first fans to reach outside the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles where Michael Jackson was brought and later pronounced dead.

How had Hayes, 25, and Coleman, 21, heard the news so quickly?

Twitter.

The two young women had learned about Jackson’s health like so many who get their news nowadays: by reading the ever-flowing feed of real-time knowledge on the microblogging service.

Jackson’s unexpected death at 50 was just the latest major news event where Twitter played a central role. But just as quickly as Twitter has emerged as a news source, so, too, has its susceptibility to false rumors become abundantly obvious.

The extraordinary amount of news coverage the mainstream media has recently devoted to Twitter has led some to think the press is in love with the 3-year-old microblogging service. But it’s a envious love.

Twitter’s constantly updating record of up-to-the-minute reaction has in

some instances threatened to usurp media coverage of breaking news. It has additionally helped many celebrities, athletes and politicians bypass the media to get their report directly to their audience.

invent no mistake about it, Twitter has in many ways been a boon to the media. It’s one more way a story might go viral and it’s arguably the best way for a news outlet to get closer to its readership. Most outlets now have a presence on Twitter with a feed directing readers to their respective sites.

But even in an Net world that has for years eroded the distance within media and consumer, Twitter is a jolt of democratization to journalism.

To moment, the most salient, almighty example of Twitter’s influence has been Iranian protesters using the service (among many other methods) to assemble marches against what they feel has been an unjust election.

Early in the protests, the State division…

Original post by dhiram