Micro-blogging in the News

With the recent release of the blog-piper (new word for me) “Ping.FM” (http://www.ping.fm/) allowing users to post to almost any service from one box, and one submit button, I believe this shows the expanding popularity of blogging, micro-blogging, and its variants, worldwide. This was also proven yesterday, with articles from most news services regarding the first streams of information from the Mumbai Bombings. Brisbane’s mX Metro Newspaper and many sothers have coined it “Citizen Journalism” saying that the first coverage surfaced on sites such as Twitter, and Flickr, and was almost live, with one “Tweet” saying “One Terrorist has jumped from Nariman House building to Chabad house – group of police commandos have arrived at the scene”.

To me, this is almost shockingly live. The simple reason that services have popped up like Twitter and FriendFeed, is to update your online friends or followers, on your status. I bet anyone the founders of these services never thought that it would be used to assist the media, and the public on sourcing live slices of information.