Here’s an excerpt from my latest CNET Asia blog post. Yup, it’s about “Balloon Boy.”

I think this incident once again shows how social media is making the news a shared experience. This, of course, is also a double-edged sword, because on the one hand, it brings the news to people who might normally not be interested in watching the news or visiting news sites. On the other hand, some may point out that this might, pardon the pun, inflate the importance of certain news items. Not to downplay the importance of the news, because I’m personally hoping the boy is all right, but as some Twitter users have already pointed out, CNN seems to have given too much coverage to it, considering other important things happening in the world, like, you know, wars and natural disasters.

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