As the tragic events unfolded in Mumbai, India, the Internet backchannel came to the foreground with messages, photos, and videos from the masses using Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and so-called citizen reporting sites such as Global Voices, as well as CNN and NDTV.
The terrorist attacks have left more than 100 dead and several hundred wounded in Mumbai, the country's financial center.
In major disasters, Twitter has become a conduit for real-time information and conversation.
As you would expect, the flow of information has been chaotic and potentially unreliable, which presents some problems, especially for those with family or friends at risk. A few posts on Techmeme question the quality of Twitter messages, which are not easily verified or tracked. Mathew Ingram argues that unverified eyewitness reports may not be accurate, but they represent a "first draft of history."
It's true that messages posted to Twitter aren't verified in any sense of the word, and in many cases could be wrong, or could perpetuate misunderstandings or factual inaccuracies -- although I think it's worth noting that dozens of Twitter messages corrected the Marriott reports not long after they first appeared on Twitter. At the same time, however, I think he's blaming Twitter for something that occurs during every similar news event: in other words, unverified eyewitness reports. Every time there is a bombing or an earthquake or a tsunami, there are reports -- many of which appear on television and other "traditional" media outlets -- that turn out to be completely wrong.
Does that make those reports invalid? No. Obviously, no one wants a loved one to be worried by false reports. But at the same time, chaotic situations result in poor information flow -- even to the "professional" journalists who are working at the scene. First-hand and second-hand reports on Twitter are no worse. Should anyone take them as gospel, or the final version of the events? No. Obviously, at some point someone has to check the facts, confirm reports, analyze the outcome, and so on. News reporting and journalism are much more of a process than they are a discrete thing. But as I have tried to argue before, Twitter reports are a valuable "first draft of history," and that is a pretty good definition of the news.
Of course, as Mathew points out, reports need to be confirmed, and no one is going to put the Twitter genie back in the bottle. It's a very rough first draft. There has to be a better way to triangulate and confirm news reports, where you could verify that eyewitnesses are actually on the ground where they say the are. If you are getting multiple tweets from several people in the same area, the likelihood that the information is accurate would increase. Of course, they could all be spreading the same rumor, which happens in traditional media as well. Using video as the source material would make the information easier to confirm.
In any case, Twitter and other sources of citizen-generated information provide a continuous pulse of data that will eventually be harnessed, and integrated with traditional media, in ways that lead to more accurate and real-time comprehensive accounts of what is going on in this troubled world.
Updated at 11 a.m. to clarify that the change.gov site with the YouTube video of the Obama's radio address has text links to the same video on AOL, MSN, and Yahoo. YouTube still has premier position as the secretary of video...
It's great that President-elect Barack Obama is delivering his regularly scheduled Saturday address in both audio and video form. After using the Internet to help him get elected and connect with younger voters, it's clear that his team will continue to exploit the media to deliver its messages and stimulate dialog.
Obama has chosen to upload the video of his Saturday address to Google's YouTube, by far the most dominant video-sharing service, and embed the video on his Change.gov transition site.
The video has already garnered more than 500,000 views, and this is just the beginning of the Obama's administration's use of video. Post-inauguration, there will likely be a White House YouTube channel to push the administration's agenda and to hopefully to provide more transparency.
My question is why favor YouTube? It's obvious that YouTube is the way to reach the most people. According to Nielsen Online's VideoCensus, Google's service served 5.35 billion video streams in September 2008. Yahoo, the closest competitor, had 264 million.
But why should the incoming president, or public official, favor one Internet video service over another? Yahoo, MSN, Blip, Veoh, and other video-sharing sites shouldn't have to lobby the White House for equal time or at least some time. I am sure the choice of YouTube was practical, and has nothing to do with Google CEO Eric Schmidt's very public support of Obama.
Implicit product endorsements are difficult to avoid for any public official. If Obama prefers a BlackBerry, Apple can't do much to fix that problem. But, Obama is rarely seen in pictures with his Blackberry and The New York Times reports that he is going to have to give up his favorite communications device.
In the case of uploading video, the Obama team can create its own branded, video-sharing service neutral video player that allows anyone in the world to embed the content. That might be a more equitable way for Obama to spread his message, and he could still have a YouTube channel.
(Credit:
change.gov)
On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss this week's big stories. It was a busy week on the search front. Adobe is providing Google and Yahoo with Flash Player technology that allows their search engine crawlers to find and index SWF content, including Flash "gadgets" such as buttons or menus and self-contained Flash Web sites. It's good to make more information accessible via search engines. However, Microsoft has been silent on whether Live Search would index Flash content.
In addition, Microsoft bought Powerset for about $100 million to enhance its search platforms. It's not a substitute for acquiring market share via Yahoo Search, but it provides a foundation for making the search experience far more compelling and precise in fewer clicks.
Of course, the Microhoo drama continues this week with the latest rumors. Larry is ready for this opera to be finished.
Finally, we discuss a judge's ruling in Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google and YouTube.
U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton ruled that records of every video watched by YouTube users, including login names and IP addresses, should be given to Viacom's lawyers. Larry said it was like combining the worst aspects of a fishing expedition and a witch hunt. Viacom is maintaining that it won't look at personal data and Google is asking for time to anonymize the information. If Judge Stanton's ruling stands, the last shreds of personal privacy on the Web could be thrown out the window.
At 7:00 a.m. PDT I was heading for my video page on YouTube and ran into this message:
I was getting to other sites just fine, so it's safe to assume it's a Google problem. YouTube receives 10 hours of video per minute and is by far the leader in the crowded field. This provides another example of why the Internet isn't like television, which tends to have higher uptime but the content just isn't as interesting as what you can find on YouTube. Awaiting word from Google on this topic.
Update: As of 7:20 a.m. YouTube has been revived.
Allen Stern at CenterNetworks has some more detail.
After a few years of waiting, Flickr videos have finally arrived. As a long-time Flickr user, I have been wondering what took so long to add videos (more on Techmeme) to the service. In the meantime, YouTube managed to sprint way ahead, leaving Yahoo Video and the nascent Flickr Video in the dust.
Despite taking the gestation period of an elephant to appear, I like the Flickr Video experience, except for the limitation to 90 seconds of video. It's the video analog of Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters. It's a fine communications constraint, but it doesn't apply as easily to video content.
The addition of video content doesn't disrupt the simplicity and utility of Flickr. It offers the same privacy controls, user interface, licensing options, and comments, captions, tags, APIs, etc.
Flickr videos live along side photos
According to Kakul Srivastava, Flickr's director of product management, Flickr Video is intended to capture the "little moments of life." She told me that the goal was not to invent a new kind of video site or take on YouTube, but to focus on "authentic user-generated and personal content."
"It's not our desire to be biggest site. We are not going after the hour-long wedding videos," she said. "People are taking videos on still cameras and mobile devices, and they are not doing much in terms of sharing videos."
If you compare the number of people posting more commercial videos on sites like YouTube and Yahoo Video, people capturing the little moments is a huge unmet need and taps into existing behaviors, Srivastava added. Users can directly upload videos from their phones. She expects that the addition of video will bring in a new audience, although uploading videos is limited today to paying Flickr users.
"If it means being more conservative out of the gate, that's fine," Srivastava said. "We want to maintain consistency of the feel and experience on Flickr. We don't want to be the biggest video site day one, but the most interesting."
She explained the difference between Yahoo Video (which is the underlying technology for Flickr Video) and Flickr Video as follows: "Yahoo Video is about the broadcast experience, while Flickr is more personal content that you want to share with friends and family...and the world, but it's more personal and authentic." Yahoo will be patrolling Flickr Video and relying on the community to eliminate inappropriate and copyrighted content, she said.
Maintaining the differentiation will be difficult. Users are putting long and short videos on a variety of other sites, including new sites such as Seesmic and Qik. But, the Flickr experience has attracted 25 million active users, and they will appreciate the addition of video.
The 90-second limit on playing time and 150MB maximum file size for upload will encourage users to post their little moments, but it will also be a cause of frustration. For example, I did an interview with Srivastava with my Flip Video camera that was 156 seconds in length. To post it on Flickr I had to go through the pain of editing it, which I would rather avoid for shorter pieces. I expect that the Flickr team and community will think seriously about raising the limit on playing time.
Interview with Kakul Srivastava on Flickr Video--the shorter version:
Interview with Kakul Srivastava on Yahoo Video--the longer version:
In early February, in the midst of Microsoft's surprise bid to acquire Yahoo, I wrote about Yahoo's Flickr Video coming soon. It's been a long time coming. I first asked Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake about a Flickr video service in December 2005.
Stewart Butterfield
After spending a few hours at the Flickr fourth anniversary party in San Francisco on Saturday night, the "coming soon" line was uttered by various Yahoo people, including Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Upon further investigation, it appears that "coming soon" means that Flickr Video will debut in beta next month.
Flickr, which was acquired by Yahoo in March 2005, defined the concept of photo sharing, but has been slow to extend the service into the video world. In the meantime, Google's YouTube has become the primary destination for video sharing, capturing one out of every three of the online videos in the U.S., according to comScore Media Metrix. Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) accounted for 6 percent of the nearly 10 billion videos viewed online in the U.S. in January. Yahoo sites, Yahoo Video, claimed 3.2 percent of video viewing.
Kaku Srivastava
Flickr Video will not replace Yahoo Video, unlike Yahoo Photos, which was folded into Flickr. The audience for Flickr is different, Kakul Srivastava, director of product management at Flickr, told me. She used the term "authenticity" to convey the esprit de corps of the Flickr photo community, which numbers more than 23 million contributors.
Flickr has been a pure photo site since its inception. Adding video into the mix has to be done in a way acceptable to the community. In other words, launching a Video service primarily to compete more with YouTube would turn the community off. It has to appeal, in an "authentic" way, to the Flickr community.
While YouTube has a large share of market, video is growing fast on the Web. The problem for Yahoo is that many Flickr members, like myself, have gone to other places to share videos. Winning them back is going to be a challenge. We'll find out next month if all the time spent figuring out how to bring video to Flickr has been worthwhile.
See also: TechCrunch.
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