The Twitter Network and the News

By comparison, my twitter network is minuscule. Far more than half the people I follow are internet friends from the security community. Nevertheless, even this small network was sending and discussing the news of the horrors of Mumbai before the major online or telecast networks were putting out the story:

“…The minute news broke of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India, social media sites like Twitter were inundated with a huge volume of messages.

With more than 6 million members worldwide, an estimated 80 messages, or “tweets,” were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.”

link: Tweeting the terror: How social media reacted to Mumbai

As an informal experiment, some people here have tried to gauge the number of twitter links between any one of us and a person in Mumbai. It seems that, for this very non scientific focus group, it is only a handful of connections. The Mumbai tragedy has shown that Twitter is a powerful communication medium – and a possible source of immediate news. Certainly, it can be a source of erroneous information. However, with a resource like Twitter on the internet, the global village becomes connected a bit more efficiently.

Catherine Forsythe