I’m amazed at seeing the tons of tweets that are flowing right now regarding the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
You can follow this flow using for example the hashtags.org service, here for the #mumbai tag:http://www.hashtags.org/tag/mumbai – but you can search other similar services on the web, that use Twitter as a source, filtering tweets with different technologies and scopes.
As you will see, and as you will see in any other similar occasion, the tweets that users are writing are very focused on giving other people real time news, and exchanging practical information: now I’m reading the phone number that you can try if you want to donate blood in Mumbai, to help the injured, but this is only an example.
This is a characteristic of Twitter that always surprises me.
On Twitter you have a list of “followers” and you “follow” other people. Normally the choice on who you’re going to follow is based on common interests, other times you decide to follow someone because in some tweets you see that one of your direct contacts are quoting some interesting tweets of other users that you go and follow directly… in this way the community network is linked in a previously unpredictable way, and the synapses create paths that permit an information flow that’s really new, and amazing.
I’m very happy to be a Twitter user, in this kind of situations.
BTW, I’m http://twitter.com/ila
