CNN's Whirlwind Twitter Romance

In recent months CNN Newsroom anchor Rick Sanchez has been called both "America's most celebrated Twitterer(?)" and "chief twit" due to his newfound use (some would say over use) of microblogging platform Twitter (as the link points out, "tweep" is actually the preferred term). He frequently runs Twitter posts as a crawl across the screen and boasts an impressive 57,540 followers to date. Just to compare, CNN's Breaking News Twitter account carries a staggering 263,730 followers. (second only to President Obama's with 308,577 followers). Sanchez maintains up-to-date Facebook and Myspace accounts. He also blogs frequently.

But Sanchez is hardly the lone techno-geek at CNN. In fact, his embrace of Web 2.0/social media is emblematic of a whole slew of examples of early-and-eager-adoption across the network, which seems to have taken the idea of utilizing social media to heart, more than any other broadcast network. (For evidence, check out the clip above where they explain how Twitter works) As Mashable points out, CNN has done everything from creating RSS feeds to embedded video, to working Twitter posts and Facebook comments into the broadcast. Perhaps their most audacious move into harnessing social media comes in the form of iReport.com, its fully user generated content platform -- which has received millions of submissions. While some have doubts about CNN's ability to make any real progress using services like Twitter, it only seems natural that the network that first pioneered "wall to wall" 24-hour TV news coverage in the 80s and 90s is, for better or for worse, leading the charge among its peers in the latest wave of mass communication.