I was working at my desk last evening and I got a notice of new Tweets from Tweetdeck. One of the messages was about the bombing in Mumbai. Then a couple of more popped up, along with a link for a Twitter search, which I followed. I read a few and went over to CNN.com, not much there. About 15 minutes later, my Google news alerted me that CNN.com had posted an article.
By the time that alert popped up, I saw a link on Twitter to a Wikipedia page. By the time CNN.com, a news agency, had posted their story, there was a whole cross linked and referenced page:
In addition there were over a hundred pictures posted on Flickr.com and tagged Mumbai. Just a couple of minutes later I see a link appear for a blog organizing aid and communications resources:
It’s amazing how fast an ad hoc community was able to self-organize, report the news, and start organizing aid.
Twitter is not the first place I would have expected to see major news break, but its amazing how fast and how intense the response was. There were status updates, and a lot of commentary. In fact in the hour I went off to watch Bones, there were 1453 Tweets about Mumbai.
If the community can organize this fast and thoroughly for a tragedy, imagine the implications for a business.