Unrelated to the topic of legal ethics, but this article intrigued me. Social media is powerful. While twitter lags behind Facebook in users, it is my prediction that within the next 5 years, it will be the main source of news for Americans.
I have a personal twitter account, mostly for the networking potential. Last night, I was studying for law school finals when people started tweeting about how the president was going to address the nation at 10:30pm. Before I even had a chance to turn the television on (and, uh, find CNN on the channel lineup), people were already tweeting about how Osama was dead. There you go. Granted, I still turned on the television to watch the actual presidential address. However, while the tweeting was happening, I kept thinking about how if I had not been on twitter I would have missed a big important event in America.
Then this morning when I read the above article about the man who was live tweeting about the attack, it sealed the deal for me: For those that don't "get" twitter, this is it in a nutshell. It's what is going on each person's corner of the world, 140 characters at a time.
Enough my husband (who doesn't get Twitter) had the TV on - tuned to The Apprentice of all things, which he never watches - and I bounded down the hall because I had just read on FB (from a friend who is active on Twitter) that the Pres was about to address the nation to announce Osama was dead. He hadn't heard anything. And he was on his laptop (doing what I don't know). About a minute later The Apprentice was interrupted with the NBC Special Report. And it was still a good 5-10 minutes before the NBC reporter announced that Osama was dead. Crazy.
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