Wow, this story is pretty

Lacy — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:49:03 -0700

Wow, this story is pretty amazing. I hope that Buck's vision becomes a reality soon. Let's keep using social media to shed light on humanitarian crises.

Journalist saved by Twitter aims to start a Twitter-driven emergency network

Chris Tompkins — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:30:10 -0700

The story made headlines around the world: James Buck, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, was detained in Mahalla, Egypt for documenting local riots. His last act before being taken into custody: Tweeting “Arrested” to his friends. That one-word message, and the ensuing wave of media coverage, would eventually free him from jail and make him the poster child for Twitter's ability to communicate in emergency situations. Now Buck wants to help out others in who are in trouble. He hopes to mobilize a Twitter-based network to respond to mobile messages sent from users in difficult situations or humanitarian crises.

Twitter is a "microblogging" platform that lets a registered user send SMS and short Web messages to others who are signed up to receive updates from that user. Buck hopes to create an SMS messaging group which allows a user in a situation like he experienced in Egypt to tweet a humanitarian group watching the specific region where the incident is occurring. Concerned parties could choose to help, or just pass on word to those who might be able to provide it.

"The interesting thing to us was that Buck found Twitter in Egypt, not in the Bay Area," said Twitter’s co-founder, Biz Stone, who met with James briefly last Friday to talk about how such a network could be integrated with the Twitter service. Stone said there are activists in Egypt who are already using Twitter in creative ways. "Activists get wind that someone is going to be picked up, they send a Twitter message, and 100 people show up outside the house ... to intimidate the police."

However, Buck recognizes that the system still needs improvements in order to function in the way he envisions. “The problem is right now you can’t send a message to a specific group of users,” he says. Buck suggested that tags might be used to direct messages to specific networks.

According to Stone, the reason his short message worked so well was that there was "No subject, no body, one line, you just do it," Stone says. "Decisions up front are potentially distracting."

When James was first arrested, then freed, Stone pointed out to CNN that Web 2.0 applications are allowing people to communicate in ways like never before, especially in disaster and emergency situations.

But the real motivation for the project, says Buck, is his Egyptian translator, Mohammad Maree, who is still jailed in Egypt's Borg al-Arab prison. James keeps his Twitter account alive with updates and stories written to shed a light on where Maree is and why he is being held, hoping the information will help free him.

( Discloser: James Buck is a former classmate of the author, Chris Tompkins )

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The Industry Standard - Journalist saved by Twitter aims to start a Twitter-driven emergency network - Comments

Wow, this story is pretty

Journalist saved by Twitter aims to start a Twitter-driven emergency network