An audience of two

Thursday April 10, 2008

The power of Twitter
Unless you actually live in China you're probably all too aware of the controversy that's surrounded the Olympic torch relay in Europe. Well yesterday the torch came to San Francisco. It was inevitable that there were going to be protests from human rights groups opposed to China's actions in Tibet and Darfur (to name just two).

Conventional news reporting just doesn't cut it in a situation like this. You don't want to be listening to reporters on the TV or radio while they describe the long periods of nothing happening. You'd wait until the evening news and catch the edited highlights.

But that was then. These days everyone is a news reporter. First there was "live blogging", where people would post play-by-play account of some event from their laptop.

But now people have mobile smart phones that can send messages, take photos and even live video. At the core of this is twitter - a simple service that allows you to broadcast and receive short messages both via the web and SMS. It's mainly used for casual chatter, but yesterday it came into its own and proved it has real value.

Over the course of the afternoon I saw regular updates from @LaughingSquid (AKA Scott Beale) and @RockBandit (AKA Dave Schumaker). I discovered that reports from other twitter users were being aggregated by @SFTorch. And I learned that the protesters were organising themselves via @TeamTibet.

Twitter wasn't the only way to see what was going on. @RockBandit and others were uploading photos in real time to Flickr and video to Qik. Whenever I had a couple of minutes to spare I could check the latest updates and even talk back to the people that were there. I got a real laugh when I heard that someone had Rick-rolled the torch - something that would never have got a mention elsewhere.

Yesterday evening I watched the coverage on BBC World News. Rajesh Mirchandani was presenting in the traditional news manner, with the outside broadcast crew. Being constrained by the limitations of traditional media he was encamped by the ferry building and wasn't in a position to follow the story as it changed. He even made reference to receiving regular status updates on his mobile (without explicitly mentioning twitter).

So there you go. Twitter isn't just about chinposin' and colour wars. It's (sometimes) more than just inane chatter, You MUST click on this!!! and I'm streaming live right now, come chat!. It's actually a useful tool.

PS: If you want to read how Chinese media reported the event, click on this link: http://snipurl.com/utter-bullshit. (I love snipurl)

PPS: Want to see a ridiculously staged photo? Check this out. The torch was never anywhere near that point and the dozens of omnipresent blue clad Chinese security guards are nowhere to be seen. Damn, I wish I had Photoshop skills - it would be fun to combine that image with something like this.

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Tags: olympic protest tibet torch twitter