There is much in the news currently about Iranian Political Instability and the use of Twitter.
There is no denying the phenomenal success and usefulness of Twitter – but it is used by anybody to write about anything. Anything at all!
There aren't many sophisticated ways to filter the increasing Twitter chatter, and the service can become a major time-suck – you can spend hours seeking Tweets that have any real relevance, interest or value.
Surely a system dedicated only to reaching a specific stakeholder / target audience – such as “security” - would better serve the purpose for the thousands of professionals who operate in it, or millions more who could reach out directly to experts for their professional advice and assistance - strategic and operational.
For example, a user generated information service for the “global community” to collaborate, SPECIFICALLY in preparation for and in response to incidents worldwide that threaten political, social, economic, humanitarian and environmental stability.
Or does such a system exist already? Is it even feasible – would /do people use it?
1 comment:
There are several challenges with open systems like Twitter when IT operations and user requirements are considered, actioned or sanctioned for such scenarios you describe.
Too many to list here, but there are several problems with systems like Twitter, among them - they can be tracked (which is a bad thing in several environments - like IRAN), they are limited in true identity management for both receiving and broadcasting, and are incredibly expensive from a management / user point of view of coordinating inbound / outbound message (information) management. Broadcast (push / outbound) style information is one area that Twitter does have the ability to shine.
Twitter is great from group to group or group to indvidual (team lead / manager / single point of contact ; and vice versa) , but only if it's not on a large scale or does NOT require significant interaction of information BOTH ways in single target community enviroment and are pre-configured for a closed loop information policy format - but this defeats the very purpose of twitter designed systems.
Such applications over look the impacts to supporting large scale operations, tasks, IT Management Control, information flow through and value / who needs to know policies and procedures. It should be noted that in general terms, Twitter was not designed to be a public safety or high stressed user enviroment application. I am not suggesting it couldn't be adapted to be used as such, but there are significant impacts, implications to be considered along with a steep learning curve.
Doug Hanchard
Rapid Response Consulting
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