Sunday, September 14, 2008

All a Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and “mircoblogging” site that allows its users to send and read other users' updates, also known as tweets.  Twitter is becoming a popular medium to share information in a similar, but more concise, manner as MySpace and Facebook. 

An interesting example of how Twitter is becoming a social justice tool, in April of this year, James Buck, a graduate journalism student at the University of California at Berkeley, and his translator were arrested in Egypt for photographing an anti-government protest. After being arrested and on the way to the police station, Mr. Buck used his phone to send the message “Arrested” to his followers on Twitter. Those contacted the university, the United States Embassy and a number of press organizations on his behalf. While being detained, Mr. Buck was able to send updates about his condition to his "followers". As a result of the message and the efforts of his Twitter friends, he was released the next day from jail after the university hired a lawyer for him.

Twitter is another resource that can be used in an investigation to gather information about individuals and their social networks.

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