WTF Is The Value of Real-time Search?
kyro: I used to think that until several months ago when I was on campus and got a call from a friend saying a gunman was roaming about, armed and ready to unload. The first thing I did was search for #uci (my uni) on Twitter and got hundreds of tweets from students around campus who were being herded to back rooms and put in lock down. Honestly, Twitter was the only place I could go to find that sort of news. The media picked up on the story about 30 minutes into it, so I thank Twitter for giving me the heads up to get the hell out of there, else I could have waited around a bit longer to see what was really happening, putting myself in a lot of risk. I mean, I probably would've beaten the gunman to death if he ever approached me, so Twitter really just spared me the discomfort of a week's worth of sore fists.