Friday, April 25, 2008

MicroBlogging Naysayers Can Now EAT IT


Since I started using Twitter and even Utterz, I've run into attitudes from the techiest of people that slammed micro and miniblogging as stupid and frivolous. Hell, even before I started using Twitter I thought that it seemed kind of idiotic. But here is an instance of using Twitter that may have saved an American's life. Turns out a UC Berkeley grad student was covering an anti-government protest and he got arrested. He Twittered from his mobile just the one word:



"Arrested."



His Twitter followers at Berkeley knew what to do, immediately jumping on the phone and getting a lawyer on the case. Without Twitter and without the social network he had built up, he'd very likely still be in that Egyptian jail or worse.



This is just one case of Twitter being used as a life saving tool--last fall folks in San Diego Twittered news and information regarding the fires that displaced a large number of people.



Is Twitter still used for stupid crap that most of us don't care about? Sure--but if it can save even a single life, can't you naysayers just get over it?



The above screencap came from a CNN.com article here: http://www.cnn.com/…index.html



I learned about this story from fellow-Twitterer Frederic (http://twitter.com/fredericl ) of http://TheLastPodcast.Net/
Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz Replies.


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