I continue to be saddened (and worried) about the state of affairs in India — and especially with Pakistan, as both are nuclear powers.  I put paper to pen (old school) and wrote “Twitter, Tradegy and Mumbai” – a backwards look about how Twitter, for better or worse, impacted communications.

And my contributions to Media Bullseye will come in a more formal format – I’ll be a regular “columnist” on the second Friday of the month.  I did not write the description of the column — Chip Griffin did:

Cleaning up the second week of each month — or perhaps just making a mess of the weekend — will be the irrascible and insightful Mark Story. He is probably over-qualified for these pages as an agency veteran, university professor, government communicator, and Red Sox fan. We couldn’t ask for a more complete package to anchor the second Friday of the month.”

Irrascible?  Perhaps.  Perpetually grumpy?  Maybe.

Anyway, for once I was pretty serious.  Have a read.

Mark

I have had a bit of fun lately with Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson on the “For Immediate Release” podcast, leaving my best “bullshit bingo” comments (”…leveraging our synergies to create a new corporate paradigm..”), but I am afraid that I have to use a term that could fall into that list, describing how Twitter has not jumped into the mainstream:

Convergence.

A series of events over the last several weeks has convinced me that Twitter has gone from a shiny new toy to an overloaded fail whale to an integral part of how we exchange information on a global scale, one that is intertwined with others ways that we send and receive information.

Neville Hobson tweeted about this as well, showing a chart of his tweets and offering comparisons between his and Geoff Livingston’s stats (I’ll leave my own stats out as my New Year’s resolution is simply to get this blog’s Technorati ranking above my shoe size), but I have seen Twitter firmly etch its spot in how we communicate over the last week through convergence.

It’s a horrific example, but the tragedy that took place in Mumbai last week demonstrated how information can be gathered, analyzed, dismissed or accepted and then propagated to an audience craving information.  And by propagated, I mean either through people reading others’ tweets and commenting on them, or through the “old” media picking up tweets and news leads.

I took a look at Blog Pulse, and rather than searching for the word “Mumbai,” I decided to search for the hash tag “#mumbai”. For those of you who have not used this before, hash tags are a way to identify your topic matter in a way that is uniquely identifiable for all.

Here are the stats that I found on Blog Pulse.  Consider that this does not actually measure the tweets themselves, but how those in the blogosphere used the hash tag as a tie-in to Twitter:

I can’t do the math (sorry, Katie Payne, but I am not a math guy), but what we are seeing is the “convergence” (there’s that word again) between the twitterverse and the blogosphere. The spike in the hash tag “#mumbai” demonstrates a cross over from people writing about it in Twitter to people writing about it in blogs to people writing about it in Twitter – and also getting into and from the mainstream media.  As I wrote a few days ago, with such as large population, India as what are likely millions of expats who were desperate for information as the tragedy dragged on.

Finally, what convinced me that Twitter is here to stay is that we are now seeing CNN use it as part of their regular newscasts, including the Mumbai tragedy.  Rick Sanchez annoys the hell out of me, but you cannot argue that a mention on CNN is worth a whole lot of Tweets.  AND – they have more than 60,000 followers.

Two days after Indian authorities restored control in Mumbai, people are still talking and tweeting about it, as we see on the index page of Tweetscan (the larger the word/hashtag, the more mentions).

I’ll leave others to discuss geopolitics and what is likely to happen in India next, but I have not joined the ranks of the true believers that, due to its convergence with other forms of communications, Twitter is here to stay.

Mark

Like many people, I spent my Thanksgiving and today watching the horrific events in Mumbai unfold.  I have learned over the years that the less said, the better in times of tragedy, but it breaks my heart to see India experience such carnage, but more so played out over several days. There are a billion people in India, but countless millions living overseas who want to know something — anything — about what is happening.  Feeling that disconnected to your homeland must provide a sense of immeasurable longing and powerlessness.

I have been trying to follow the coverage on BBC America, but with two young children popping in and out of the room, it’s hard to catch anything consistently.  Some of the best updates I have been getting are from Shonali Burke and I have also been following #mumbai.

All I can say is that one of my Tweeps, Shonali, and one of my students, have both been affected by this tragedy — which makes it more personal for me — but not nearly as personal as for them.

Like I said, the less said is the better — I’ll just state that that the Indian people and my friends and colleagues are firmly in my thoughts and deepest hopes for this thing to end.

And the best and most up-to-date news I have seen has come from #mumbai.

Mark