I was following #mumbai on twitter for a while and I have to say, It was more noise than signal. People retweeting the same thing again and again, some idiots guessing the names of the terrorist organizations which might be responsible and others talking about War on Terror with some random country which they assumed was part of it.
It was pure nuisance on twitter, there were no facts at all. It looked like a game where they were competing against each other to spread rumors. Twitter and Flickr will never replace my news because i overestimate the collective stupidity of the masses.
"... Twitter isn’t the place for solid facts yet - the situation is way too disorganized. But it’s where the news is breaking ..."
This is a useful insight with respect to your comments (
I was following #mumbai on twitter for a while and I have to say, It was more noise than signal ) So it shows the communications bit is there just the switched on person on the ground is not. Consider how real news organisations achieve this. My source of local news happened to have an ex-journalist in India to do a phone interview ~ http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/news-audio/200811/200...
So Twitter is good for a short bit of info but is pretty useless to get across important information.
It was pure nuisance on twitter, there were no facts at all. It looked like a game where they were competing against each other to spread rumors. Twitter and Flickr will never replace my news because i overestimate the collective stupidity of the masses.