It may already be known, but I follow Lance Armstrong on twitter – I should say, I am 1 of the 293,587 people following him on twitter. Last week Mr. Armstrong wrote a ‘128 character’ review of the Giro Time Trial stage : here. Whilst browing my feeds this evening I found an article written about Mr. Armstrong’s view on the Time Trail stage of the Giro : here.

It struck me that an entire article was taken from a simple 128 character statement. I would hesitate to guess that journalists have been doing this for a long time, but I guess before the internet provided oppertunities like @twitter, that the basis for an article ever came so easily. That is, in the past journalists would have to earn quotes to be the start of a piece like this.

I assume that what ever that is posted on twitter is taken as an official word from that person – if Mr. Armstrong writes something in direct media like this, it is taken as an official comment. And I would also then assume that it is fair game for an article.

So in fact @twitter is like a constant place to find the official word, and that is what makes it a powerful tool.

By the word count here, it would have taken about 10 tweets to actually say this, which is why I took this time to write such a small article. Just hit me at the time I guess.