How does an Internet junkie, news organization, or political operative monitor rapidly evolving real-time events, from the crucial details to the bigger picture? More importantly, how can a data stream be turned into real-time action, reaching the people who need it, when they need it, and in a form they can easily digest?
In this real time, all the time world, sometimes the importance of certain things drift out of our consciousness as fast as they drift out of our news feeds.
#iranelection ( the use of twitter to rally, communicate and break news about the recent election issues is Iran) is one such instant. It will go down in history as one of the turning points in the way humans connect and communicate.
Brave individuals (thousands of them) used twitter to bring us live action, from the streets of Iran. Something that CNN, BBC or any other network could not do. It created a world wide uprising, something that I'm sure has struck the fear of the crowd into most governments around the world (be they legitimate or not) ... even the Whitehouse has blocked twitter on it's computers.
The point here isn't that Twitter is Awesome, though I think it is, but rather that control of the communications tide has changed hands. Out of the few, into the masses.
Regardless of the tools used, twitter, facebook, the internet in general, has altered the way "we" communicate, and I LOVE that.
That being said, it's new, it's imperfect (spam!) and it's still not reached the majority of connected people on the planet.
Though that seems like more of an opportunity than a fault.
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