Comments on: Using Twitter to follow the Bangalore bomb blasts

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:10:55 +0000

Nice work Dan :)

Bizarrely, I was teaching my tracking news online course in central London

http://www.journalism.co.uk/36/43/74/

when started to look at delicious social bookmarks. I spotted Sambrook bookmarking you and wondered what was up. I set the participants the taks of sourcing everything the could - including finding contactable sources - on the bomb blasts.

All worked very well. Clearly, an horrific event but it did go to show participants just how useful services like Twitter, Tweetscan and Twitterlocal are in finding primary sources. Verification is of course... another story :)

Nice work.

By: scorpfromhell

scorpfromhell — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:46:35 +0000

Daniel, great post and good summarization. You have captured my reactions on the naysayers already. All that I would like to add is that, terrorists need not really take lives, just cause fear, panic, pandemonium so that their voices are heard. It now remains to be seen who claims responsibility and whats their cause.

Even if no established terrorist group is found to be the miscreant, the gap in the intel of the police, et al. has been shown in a pretty aping manner.

And interestingly, the Jaipur blasts in May 2008 and today's blasts in Bangalore are both low tech & duplicable pretty easily by any damn hooligan. Isn't that a valid reason to be concerned for us Bangaloreans? And if Twitter was a way for all of us "techies" to get together, to keep each other informed, is it hype/hysteria?

Theres NO coverage in the popular media about twitter's follow up today. Twitter in Bangalore is only a niche service, not as mainstream as it is out there in the US. So it has solely been used as a means of communicating among the twiterrati of Bangalore and has not at all contributed to any hysteria.

By: Mukund Mohan

Mukund Mohan — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:09:48 +0000

Daniel
Thanks. Good post. I have to question though, what's hype about 9 blasts (regardless of how few people they killed) and the fact that both the government and security professionals were trying to get things under control.

The fact still is that twitter was the easiest way to keep people (many of my friends are in the Silicon Valley and they have close family in Bangalore) updated.

Having been in that situation before I know how nerve wracking it is to get any information from any source on whether people you know back home are safe.

It served that purpose. I am happy about that.