Wednesday, April 08, 2009

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

It was bound to happen. As Twitter creeps into the halls of Congress, jury rooms, and religious services across the country, most motivated folks are using it to foment revolution:

A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police.

The sea of young people reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation’s tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network.

The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.
Even the old man in me (who is increasingly mumbling "you damn kids" about this Twitter stuff) can see that this is a good use of Twitter and the like. Although I wonder how smart it is to organize on what is, in essence, an open service. Is there no need for operational secrecy anymore.

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