Social Media and the death of Osama Bin Laden

It has been almost a week now since the news broke that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by a US Navy SEALS team in Pakistan. It wasn’t CNN, NBC, ABC or CBS that broke the news to the public, but social media sites like Twitter. Amazing right? It took the news media over 45 minutes to confirm what Twitter and Facebook had known for well over an hour.

Now this got me thinking, in the age of social media, where Twitter knows more about current events then CNN, I wondered what would it be like if Facebook and Twitter were around back on September 11, 2001, when the largest terrorist attack in history unfolded. Back then, everyone had to rely on CNN to tell them what was currently happening. Now when something big goes down, everyone whips out there iPhone and goes onto Twitter to see what their followers are saying. Imagine being in New York City on 9/11, logging onto Twitter to live blog the planes crashing into the World Trade Center as it happens, from right there in front of the Twin Towers. I think that would have been something to see through the eyes of social media as we know it today.

It’s amazing how the World Wide Web has evolved in just 10 years time. The users of Twitter now have more collective journalistic power than CNN did 20 years ago. This is how the web will evolve. This is the future of information. This is what social media is for.

WikiLeaks Takes Final Stand, Threatens To Release Insurance Document if Shut Down

In it’s final stand, WikiLeaks is threatening to release US insurance documents if further attempts are made to bring the site offline. Fox News and Mashable are reporting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that if the government tries to make any further attempts to shut down WikiLeaks, they will release several more classified documents.

Amung the documents they are threatening to release are uncensored documents about BP and Guantonomo Bay, as well as a 1 GB “insurance file”, encrypted with a 256 AES key that WikiLeaks says they have the password for. Hundreds of thousand of people have already downloaded the insurance document, but are unable to access it because it is encrypted. The United States government says they are aware that WikiLeaks has the file, but they do not know exactly what it might contain.

WikiLeaks is the whistleblower website that released thousands of Iraq war documents this summer, provided by a former US Military officer that is currently being held in a federal jail while awaiting trial. One week ago, WikiLeaks began releasing another round of documents, ranging from foreign relations to China’s hacking of Google earlier this year.

WikiLeaks under DDOS Attack As They Prepare To Release New Documents

Wikileaks, the site known for infamously releasing US government documents about the Iraq war, was under a DDoS attack according to their Twitter account. The site is preparing to release more leaked documents today. It is not known who is responible for the attack, but it is probably someone who is trying to delay the documents from being seen. They aren’t doing a very good job because the documents have already been leaked to several media outlets.

Blocking Google TV Is Only Gonna Hurt Content Providers In The End

There has been a backlash between the four big media companies in the US and the inclusion of Google Chrome in Google TV. As soon as the Logitech Revue and Sony Internet TVs with Google TV included were released, Hulu blocked access to GTV owners. A workaround was quickly found, but then Hulu blocked Google TV with a much more permanent solution. Then the rest of the four major networks, CBS, ABC, FOX, and NBC blocked access to their own streaming content via their websites. Google and the networks have been battling it out for a while now, with the companies trying to persuade Google to filter out torrents from their search pages to try and stop piracy. But they probably mostly want money from Google.

In my opinion, content provider’s actions are only going to hurt their image, because while they may have blocked Google TV, all people have to do is buy a cheep computer and a TV tuner and problem solved. What will the big four do next, block ALL access to streaming content because they aren’t sure if people are watching from media PCs in their bedrooms?

 

Today is National Quit Facebook Day

Today, May 31st 2010 is not only Memorial Day, it is also Quit Facebook Day. The folks over at http://quitfacebookday.com have set this up. As of this post, over 28,000 Facebook users have committed to take the plunge and close their account. Are you one of them?

It’s actually really hard to REALLY delete your Facebook account, but the people over at wikiHow have a great article on how to do it. It gives you everything you need to do in order to delete it.

1 million iPhone 3G’s sold in the first weekend. Does this mean that BlackBerry may have some compitition?

The iPhone 3G sold over 1 MILLION in the first weekend and even though Black Berry still controls the smart phone market, could this mean the iPhone may make it as a leading smart phone?