I woke this early this morning to the horrible news from Mumbai. I first heard about it – not on the radio- but on my iPhone via Twitter. After all the radio only has scheduled news times. Twitter is instant and constant … and quick.
I had recently started following @BreakingNewsOn who were covering it but also there were also several people in my stream retweeting people who were in Mumbai. There was one person @Vinu who was in the immediate area who twittered his experiences AND very quickly uploaded his disturbing photos to Flickr . Someone else pitched in and bought him a Flickr Pro account just as he was about to run out of space.
Also, very quickly, everyone Twittering about it started tagging their tweets #Mumbai. Anyone can use that tag to see a constantly updating stream of the news via search.twitter.
And here I am (very quickly) blogging my impressions, not of the event itself, but of the impact of social networking and social media on the way I recieved the news.
It’s just another reinforcement of Mark Pesce’s notions of hyperconnectivity, he wrote of after the China earthquake in May. I am wondering whether its more mainstream (after all CNN rang Vinu) or am I just more used to it?
PS Twitter is really becoming mainstream now that the likes of Malcom Turnball, Kevin Rudd, Richard Branson and Telstra (or their PR staff) are all using it, some more effectively than others.
Suelibrarian 