Web 3.0 at Work - "Human does it better" for Focussed News

The news broke out about three hours ago during mid morning (around 10:30 am) at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York:

Thirteen people were confirmed dead (including perpetrator), twenty-six wounded, and forty-one were taken hostage by an Asian gunman: 42-year-old Johnson City resident, Jiverly Voong, who later shot himself. Five people, aged from twenty to mid-fifties, were treated for gunshot wounds at Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City. (Wikipedia, Apr 3, 2009 - US)

A search on Google News revealed that among the first reports came from Elmira Star-Gazette with the headline "Shooting at American Civic Association":

Police are responding to reports of a shooting at 131 Front St. this morning, the site of the American Civic Association. They began staging at Oak and Main ...

Immediately, the news was covered by a scores of other news media companies including News 10 Now, The Associated Press and USA Today being among the earliest. Within two hours, over a thousand news sources have covered it, and the count is at over 1,500 as of 3am Malaysia Time (MYT) or 3pm in New York, USA (EST).

However, although the news naturally made it the top-most position in Google News (US Edition), overall news focus was varied to several other topics including "madoff", "obama", "jobs" etc. as the media companies think that people are more concerned about the troubling economy and financial woes with Obama being in Europe (France specifically during G20 stop in London) meeting world's leaders to cook up economy-fixing plans:

But for the millions of Internet users on Twitter, the most revolutionary social media platform to-date (touted the "web 3.0 that people have been waiting for", which is reportedly being actively pursued by media giant Google for final acquisition), the focus topic was unanimous:

It's the mass-shooting and hosting crisis in Binghamton, clearly ahead of all others, similar to previous reportings of the Mumbai raid, several occassional earthquakes and tsunami warnings, possible Google acquisition of Twitter etc.


One of the first tweets on the Binghamton news probably came from BNOnews, a new media service (with over 114,000 followers as of 4th of April 2009) specifically focussed on using Twitter to disseminate breaking news headlines:

BULLETIN -- AT LEAST FOUR PEOPLE SHOT, MORE THAN 40 HOSTAGES INSIDE BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK BUILDING.

Immediately, the original tweet was retweeted by dozens other Twitter users creating ala-MLM chain effect for the news distribution, reaching thousands in the matter of minutes, and could end up to reach a million or so readers in the matter of hours, as observed from the dozens of tweets that continue to be posted every minute to a tune of thousands per hour, or tens of thousands per day!

That's Web 3.0 at work... as they say (ripped off DMOZ Open Directory's campaign), "Human does it (the news) better!"

BTW, our heart and prayers go to family and friends of the victims of the Binghamton shooting...

Read more about the Binghamton shootings at world's biggest and most up-to-date encyclopedia, the Wikipedia.