I’ve posted here many times about how a story where Twitter helps spread news is not news anymore. (kind of like reporting that journalist use telephones).

Now there is no need to sit glued to the 24 hour news feed. Just scan your feed for references that interest you and use Twitter Search to instantly see what’s up.

This morning, while replies to the many people who gave thanks for clean water, I notice a tweet that said “stop tweeting #Mumbai seems to be working”.

I’d read about the Mumbai violence a few times, it’s been a trending topic since the incident started.

But this was different. Could it be that a government was annoucing such nonsense? This I had to check out.

A quick click showed that many people were retweet (copying someone else’s tweet) with the message that looked like a rumor.

I don’t know @BradMays from Dallas. I’m sure he meant well. I’m also pretty sure (the RT at the beginning of the tweet) that he didn’t research the story and, since the RT was from a tweet from @Mumbai.. he was assuming that it was true.

Reading the profile page of @Mumbai didn’t tell me anything more. Whoever write the tweets is not disclosing sources, and used the word “perhaps” in an earlier post.

I have no idea whether there are officials in the Indian government that would prefer that people stop tweeting. I think it would be safe to assume that they don’t want notices about their movement revealed. No one wants to give their enemies their strategy.

Within seconds of looking at the search feed, I was convinced it was just a rumor. I don’t know this, but here I am reporting it.

And that’s the point… From now on, we get the raw feed of news as it happens. We edit what we want to see and believe. And we have the choice of waiting until after the even to get someone else’s filtering.

Immediacy is great. It feels like you are there. Be careful though, unfiltered is.. well, unfiltered:

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