Tracking Events on Twitter

Posted By: Bob Buskirk on January 4th, 2010
7 Comments... What do you have to say?

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!

Posted in: Events, Pittsburgh, Tech Related, The Net
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7 Responses to “Tracking Events on Twitter”

Caterers Sydney said on January 7th, 2010 at 1:03 am

Hi,I love twitter.I think you should be paying more attention in class towards your lessons, rather than what’s going on somewhere else in the world.

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Anxiety Sydney said on January 7th, 2010 at 12:04 pm

Facebook is “relaxing” and not that complicated. I mean it’s a no-brainer. My friend has one and i could pretty much make one any moment, it’s not that difficult..and it’s way easier to talk to someone you havn’t seen in a while. [it's very easy to update your profile too, myspace it took me 3 days to figure out what to do]

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Voyage Montreal said on January 7th, 2010 at 5:42 pm

Twitter is just awesome. I am currently using it as a Marketing tool, it is showing some positive results

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headpieces said on January 8th, 2010 at 6:39 am

Twitter is such a great tool not only for those who want to stay in touch with their friends but also for those who would like to make their blog/site more popular. Social networking sites are great marketing platforms.

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Caterers Sydney said on January 11th, 2010 at 9:15 am

Tracking event hashtags on Twitter has grown a ton in popularity over the last few years, ever since Twitter exploded at SXSW. It’s easy to do using Twitter Search by inputting the hashtag for the event. It’s not a perfect system – sometimes there’s too much noise, spam creeps in, etc.

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Bathroom Wall Floor Tiles said on January 12th, 2010 at 11:57 pm

Twitter is real-time information provider and tracking system on it is useful but most of users are not using it!
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Coast guard gifts said on February 26th, 2010 at 9:01 am

Then this twittering thing where people will be at sports events or whatever and they update there twitter like every minute how dumb..
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