Social Media Intel Links

While social media sites have served as valuable Intel sources in the past, the Mumbai attacks demonstrated just how valuable these sites can be for real-time intel.  My social media network alerted me before the major media that an attack was underway and throughout the day provided the most insightful raw intelligence available.  Here’s a list of sites that came in handy:

Twitter:  The first warning of attacks came to me via Twitter.  You can follow me here.

Twitter search:  Here you can search for keywords as they appear on Twitter.  Using the keyword “mumbai” provided a wealth of real-time information.  As events develop, users will start tagging a keyword with the # symbol.  In this case, #mumbai provided a bit more refined feed.

Mahalo.com – Mahalo had dedicated page that was being updated in real-time with links to other sites and conventional sources.

Flickr.com – Photos were coming in from the attacks in real-time.  Many of them were also licensed with Creative Commons which allowed others to use them on their web site as they blogged about the event.

Wikipedia – Like Mahalo, Wikipedia had a dedicated page that was updated in real-time.  I just found it to be less organized than Mahalo.

GroundReport - Discovered yesterday, this site was providing some real-time citizen journalist reporting.

YouTube – Had videos being posted by users almost immediately.

SocialMedian – Best described as conversational reporting.  Not as much value, but interesting to check out.

FriendFeed – Replicated a lot of what was happening on Twitter, but with actual coversations.

Please leave a comment if you would like to add to the list.

Two articles of interest:

Tweeting the Terror

Social Media a lifeline. Also a threat?