with regards to the significance of social media and web 2.0 for tracking a real-world crisis. As Mike Arrington correctly points out the most up-to-date and accurate information about today’s terror attacks in India came from Twitter, Flickr, and other social media sites. Also for the first time today, the site www.homelandsecurity.com linked not to CNN or another major news site in their early coverage, but to Mahalo.com. Mahalo was tracking new information and posting it to a dedicated page about the attack and included Twitter and other unconventional sites in their sourcing.
A few weeks ago I spoke with my friend Bob Gourley about some ideas I had for Twitter Early Warning on major events (earthquakes, terrorist attacks, or even flu outbreaks). Twitter proved today that it has a legitimate role in the open source intelligence arena.