Start a Riot, via Twitter

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/04/08/moldova.unrest/index.html?iref=newssearch

This link is to a story about how anticommunists in Moldova organized a protest of the recent elections most through Twitter and Facebook. Some 10,000 students were organized to protest and this shows just how powerful and interconnected people really are. The idea of the expanding tree that was discussed in class, is in effect here as the organizers probably have hundreds of "friends" through these two sites and notification of the protest probably spread quickly throughout this group as they have similar interests and concerns.

Facebook and twitter were used to the same effect during the floods in Fargo. An quote from an AP article talking about the use of twitter and Facebook made me think of the long-range links we talked about in class:

"Troy Elseth, a 29-year-old software engineer in Mountain View, Calif., attended college in Fargo and plans to move back this spring. In recent days, he found himself obsessively checking a Web site that updated the level of the Red River."

It's those random long-range links like these that help to interconnect people throughout the country to Fargo.

Not only has Twitter been used to start riots, but to:

1) Hold an interview:

Called a "twitterview", these interviews over Twitter are becoming more and more popular. An example: http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/03/my-twitterview.html <-- This is a recent interview of John McCain by George Stephanopoulos

2) Follow news:

Many news sites such as AppleInsider and others have Twitter streams for readers to keep up with news in a way that's much faster than waiting for the TV news or even going to newspaper websites. Also, people gain a lot of news through users' Twitter streams because normal people are much more likely to add a quick post about an event before a news network can have a staff writer write and edit an article and post it to the internet.