Twitter and the Iran election

[cdeemer]

Twitter, which seems so silly 99.9% of the time, proved its unique value during the post-election protests in Iran. With the media closed down, "tweets" are about the only real time messages getting out of Iran. Today, for example, I spent a heart-wrenching time reading real-time tweets from university students as they were being beaten by plain-clothes forces invading their dorms. Many were able to post photos as well. This is a kind of "you are there" experience I've seldom had -- somehow more participatory, and sad, by the stream of constant tweets, many with links to photos. I couldn't take it any more, finally, and quit.

Check out #IranElection at http://twitterfall.com if you've got the stomach for it.

[tiny]

Wow. This may be the first time I've ever found the idea of tweets useful. Thanks

[Dave McElderry]

I can't read fast enough to keep up with the incoming messages. I'm interested, but this delivery isn't useful to me.

[cdeemer]

On the right panel, you can set the speed of the scrolling. On the left panel, you can filter content. Last night, for example, there was MUCH more traffic about the Lakers than about Iran, which tells you something.

[Dave McElderry]

Filtering on #IranElection as you suggested, at the default speed of .5 per second, the number of queued messages increases to hundreds in just a few minutes. I'm used to reading forum threads, and expect to read everything posted on topics that interest me. This obviously can't happen, and for me it's like trying to get a drink by sticking my head under Niagara Falls. Maybe I'm too old.

[Bob]

Went to the twitterfall site for the first time. Playing around I found a few things that might help. First, moving the cursor over the panel at the top pauses the flow if you need to catch up. Second, it appeared that I was seeing a lot of repeats. Changing the settings to not show "retweets" cut down on the cued messages and slowed the rate considerably and eventually stopped. Not sure what's going on, not being a regular.

It's still not my cup of tea! Don't care all that much for stream of consciousness when it's just one person in a novel -- let alone the random stream of consciousness of thousands intermingled.

[cdeemer]

Too old? Hey Dave, I'm about to turn 70! Overall, the accuracy of what comes out of Twitter is much better than I expected. About 3 to 5 hours after something is reported on T, I see it on CNN or another traditional news source. I think this is a watershed moment in news delivery and if I were in the news dept at a TV station, I'd be brainstorming about how to embrace this technology into my news delivery. I'm trying to keep abreast of the news in Iran and Twitter smokes everything else (due to the restrictions on the others, obviously). I'm not quite sure why the authorities can't stop the tweets but there you have it. The best marriage of traditional and new news reporting I've found is at The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com, a decidedly liberal news source but one doing an excellent marriage of traditional sources and analyses, tweets, and blogs.

[Clayton]

It's still not my cup of tea! Don't care all that much for stream of consciousness when it's just one person in a novel -- let alone the random stream of consciousness of thousands intermingled.

Kinda sounds like the Borg