Public safety officials are starting to rely on Twitter to find out what is going on.

CNN admits that it’s faster than waiting for the news

Police and fire departments are using Twitter

“We think the police department has an obligation to get information out to the community through whatever means or mechanisms we have at our disposal,” said Lakeland Police Assistant Chief Bill LePere. “Traditional media releases, expecting the local print media to pick it up and run it in the newspaper tomorrow, is 24 hours too late.”

Read the rest of the story on CNN

twitter police, tweet 911, twitter fire, cnn twitter

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Continuing with my thread of “Twitter in the news soon won’t be news” .. I have to report on the latest move.

Reporters using Twitter during an interview to get questions for a panel.

We know that using Twitter is becoming about as standard as using a telephone, and anyone watching live seminars and Ustream videos know how important Twitter is.. but here is @ricksanchezcnn on CNN.. you don’t get much more mainstream than that!

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CNN report of a student using Twitter to get out of an Egyptian Jail

Highlights of the Story on Frontline

• Student James Karl Buck sent one-word text from detention about his arrest
• Twitter message allowed college to get word, hire a lawyer for him
• Now Buck’s quest is to find translator Mohammed Maree, who was arrested with him
• Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows users to update their status

James Buck posted his report on Frontline

Sign the petition to Free Malee

I’ll leave the reporting to CNN and the thousands of messages on Twitter. Thank goodness Buck got out safe and can continue to use his network to help Maree.

You can follow James Buck on Twitter for updates @jamesbuck

Let’s look at the power of Twitter in the story.

First off, thanks to @MarieLCoccia for sending the link to me. The story was posted while I slept, but Marie knew I’d be interested and it was the top tweet on my Relpy screen this morning. I probably would have heard about the story, but with Marie’s tweet, I was able to do this blog post a lot sooner.

CNN also ran the story with “Twitter” in the headline. I’m guessing that a few CNN readers not using Twitter yet are joining today. Reminds me that offline, when I tell someone that I’m writing a book about Twitter, the usual response is “what?” or “I’ve been thinking of trying that.” All this power from a relatively unknown startup service.

The one word “arrested” would have been useless without context. I’m absolutely certain of this because of this tweet from yesterday:

wholesaler : Wow Warrenwhitlock arrested by doughnut whore with pink cuffs you go girl!

2008-04-25 14:28:04

That’s right, some clown made up an account and called himself the social media police. He ate donuts and harassed people about his “Twitter rules” (prompting my post “What You Should Do” The Rules of Social Media). At one point. he sent a message to me with the word “ARRESTED.” Several of my friends asked if he was serious, but no one hired took any other actions. They had context. They could read the other tweets and understood that I wasn’t in real danger.

The connections and relationships you build in your social network have real power in the real world. Dare I say that the twitterverse IS the real world full of real people.

We talk about work life, family life, online friends, offline connections like they are seperated from each other. With social media networks like Twitter, we combine them all into “my life”

What about you. Do you have boundaries? Are there people and places where you won’t tweet? Are there people who you haven’t told about the messages you are sending out to the twitterverse?

Please comment below so we can get the story right for the TwitterHandbook. I really appreciate your tweets, comments and trackbacks. They will make this a better book, and enrich my life.

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