I have been using Twitter for quite some time now and I really did not find out its potential until a few months ago. Many people think that Twitter is just for seeing what your friends are up to or in my case seeing what I’m having to eat, but it is really a useful resource for tracking current events and things that are going on right this minute. This is really where you see the power of Twitter and why hashtags are extremely useful.

A few months ago when the G20 was happening in Pittsburgh there was sure a lot going on in the city. There were many demonstrations, riots, and other interesting things going on. When everything first started happening I really did not have any urge to go downtown and check things out. So since I am on the computer a lot I loaded up Seesmic Desktop and put in #G20 and #Pittsburgh in a search column and the tweets that included those hashtags started coming up. As the G20 started getting closer the more and more tweets came up, I saw pictures of blackhawk helicopters over the city, pictures of protesters, etc. It was very cool, and more informative than the news about the G20 that was on TV.

As one of the first protests was getting broke up by riot police twitter was going crazy! People were explaining it as it was happening and telling people who were stuck in the crossfire where to go. Reading all of these tweets I felt like I was really there in all of the action! It was like I was in a war room overseeing the battle! Like I said it was better than watching the news!

I finally decided to go down to check out the action the second night of the protests. With my iPhone I was able to still track the hastags and found out where the protests where happening and was able to know where to go to be safe and out of the line of police, who were basically taking arresting anyone who was out that night.

This really shows what a useful resource Twitter is and how it can keep you safe! It will be fun to track things going on at CES when I’m there in just a few days!