I am visiting my in-laws for the holidays when I happened to hop onto Twitter this afternoon. That’s when I discovered the horrible news about an attack at the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai, India. But as I continued to watch the chatter on Twitter, the situation got worse. More attacks at the Taj Hotel and word attackers were taking people with passports from the US and the UK. Talk of grenade attacks and suddenly a list of people who were in Mumbai emerged. It was amazing to suddenly find people who were in the city give their perspective. I was almost immediately hooked to the Twitter search page where people were using the #mumbai tag with updates on the situation. At some points thousands of new posts would appear in a matter of seconds.

The most fascinating information emerging came from a Twitter user named Vinu. CNN reports his full name is Vinukumar Ranganathan. He had seen the damage first-hand. Many of the explosions happened a couple of blocks from his home. Along with his tweets, he started to upload dozens of photos he took while he was outside. While I read his writing and looked at his pictures, I noticed him comment that CNN had seen his tweets and wanted to talk to him on the air. His phone interview and his photos emerged on that network. His photos can be found online interspersed with AP and Getty Images on CNN.com. CNN started actively recruiting first-hand information through social networks and I suddenly realized the social network of news is going mainstream. It’s fascinating.

While I was having this awesome social media moment, a family member talked to me skeptically about how it was possible I could know so much about what was happening without following a “real” news source. I feel I was getting better and more accurate information following Twitter than anywhere else. Many of the facts I learned emerged 10 minutes, even an hour later through CNN or other outlets. Along with the Twitter feed, a help blog emerged and a wiki that was keeping up with the developments very closely. You can even follow Twitter real-time and within a 15 mile radius of Mumbai. It’s incredible how the world can combine to deliver awesome information.

UPDATE: A nice list of social networks used during this developing story can be found on Poynter’s website and here.

I’m deep inside many different social networking tools. I use them personally in order to see how useful they are for my job. If it’s useful for my day to day life, then there may be a great reason for my newsroom to share its information using those tools. A year ago I got into Twitter, but no one else in my circle got into it so I left. I jumped back in last fall and it’s really picked up steam. Now I’m trying to think of ways these short messages can be helpful for my job and I’ve enjoyed what I can talk about in my life. Fun products like Tweetstats can show off what I talk about the most (like kids, work, meetings, newsroom). I spend a lot of time playing with these tools and thinking big — on a personal and professional level. I blog on Wordpress and Blogger, I tweet on Twitter, I post pictures on Flickr, I create “scrapbooks” on Scrapblog, I co-moderate a Yahoo group, I connect with people on LinkedIn and Facebook. I oversee a news website and an election website. I text, I surf the web from my phone. It’s a hell of a juggle and someday someone is going to find a way to merge all of these products and concepts that offer a connection into one cellphone based tool. I hope I’ll be able to join in and help with the creation of those tools. It wasn’t that long ago when my boss and I were talking about how he would love to see a small handheld video player — Oh you know, like a video iPod? I’m visioning the world’s most interactive iPhone where you can type, talk or post without any effort. That will be super cool. Who knows. Maybe’s Google’s Friend Connect will do that… When it goes live (and it’s rumored to launch today). This could have major implications on how to help a standard website (like komu.com) connect with its audience in a more social way. (The Washington Post explains)

I am constantly looking for ways for my web crew to interact with our audience online. For the last week I’ve encouraged the KOMU-TV audience to submit photos that show how they are Mizzou fans. I’ve only gotten 10 or fewer pictures. But today was amazing. A terrible explosion happened in the state capital. A tanker full of explosive fuel blew up, killing the driver. The explosion damaged a bridge and knocked out a lot of the city’s power. People who were nearby and far away started taking pictures. A viewer who was really close to the scene emailed us photos - Amazing photos of the devastation. Other people joined in and shared their perspective. It ended with this slideshow. We’ve had more than 870 views in the last four hours. For a small market, it’s amazing.

As a side: I don’t keep up with television schedules anymore thanks to TiVO. But here’s a funny thing: My husband was watching PTI on ESPN this evening (on TiVO) when they mentioned Charlie Brown’s Christmas special was on. So my husband hopped onto the TV schedule, hit record and now I have a cool show to watch with the kids sometime soon. I didn’t know anything about the show until I saw someone’s IM status mention the show. I said how disappointed I was that we missed recording the show and my husband smiled to show me he had already captured it. It’s a changing world.

**Update - That slideshow ended up getting more than 2,000 views in one night. Pretty darn cool.**

Every week, I give students the chance to report “differently.” They have a chance to work with broadcast students who are working on “traditional” news while they can take the topic and expand upon it. What is fun is seeing the amazing work the students came up with. They ranged from audio slideshows to a couple of different interactive maps — one an interactive Flash map, the other an interactive Google map. I’m really proud.

The massive fires in California were an amazing opportunity for journalism. Poynter has a TON of interesting thoughts and perspectives from journalists who covered it. One of the recent entries that I’ve read is about a professional photographer who allowed anyone to use his photos as long as he was given credit. He did it by using Creative Commons on Flickr. I actually use Creative Commons on my personal pictures as well… Although most are private. Look around Twitter! You can find amazing stories being told there. I can’t say I would have imagined that possibility a few months ago. I saw it as a great way to communicate information to a newsroom, but I hadn’t seen it as a direct way to communicate to an online viewer. Now I see it as genius. A small newspaper was broadcasting live information on Justin.tv. Anyway, there are many websites out there that have documented the amazing out-of-the-box thinking from journalists this week. I love all of it!