Today, Google had some major issues for about an hour – see here.  A few years back, we would just have accepted that a site went down and hope it came back soon.

These days, it’s different though!    Thousands of users, finding problems on google, headed over to Twitter and posted about it.  Within minutes a hashtag #googmayharm had been proposed and was soon in use.  Initially I searched on twitter for the error code google was giving and found the hashtag, so I searched for that, and found literally hundreds of twitters being posted every minute!

A few weeks back when a jet crashed into the Hudson River in New York, the first information and the first picture of the plane on the net were on Twitter.  This instant form of news broadcasting carried out not by the press, but by normal members of the public moves the speed of information on another step.

Today, if something happens anywhere in the world, whether it be something enormous such as a plane crash or something more local, we can find out about it instantly.  As our economic world crashes around our ears, those who make use of these developments in technology could well be the most successful people in the next few years.  

We wait to see (probably on Twitter!)