Reporting India via Twitter

There was an interesting piece on CNN yesterday as the terrorist attacks unfolded in India.

"With more than 6 million members worldwide, an estimated 80 messages, or "tweets," were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates."

The report goes on to day that reports of what people were seeing, pictures, and blood donation requests and details were being set out over twitter.

"As Twitter user "naomieve" wrote: "Mumbai is not a city under attack as much as it is a social media experiment in action."

Neha Viswanathan, a former regional editor for Southeast Asia and a volunteer at Global Voices, told CNN, "Even before I actually heard of it on the news I saw stuff about this on Twitter.

"People were sending in messages about what they were hearing. There were at least five or six blogs from people who were trapped, or who were very close to what happened."

The use of these fun technologies has been something our generation has used for quite a while, and politicos used throughout the campaign and on Election Day, its no surprise that the international community is as advanced if not more than the US is. I totally see this as a reflection of where we're progressing.

"A group of Mumbai-based bloggers turned their Metroblog into a news wire service, while the blog MumbaiHelp offered to help users get through to their family and friends in the city, or to get information about them, and has had a number of successes.

Flickr also proved a useful source of haunting images chronicling the aftermath of the attacks. Journalist Vinukumar Ranganathan's stream of photos were published by CNN and other major broadcasters. . .

A Google Map showing the key locations and buildings with links to news stories and eyewitness accounts, and CNN's iReporters flooded the site with their videos and images of the terror attacks."

While its not an attack, the Inauguration is sure to be a great reflection of how we can use tools to better report events as they unfold.