Japan disaster sparks social media innovation

As Japan grapples with an unprecedented triple disaster — earthquake, tsunami, nuclear crisis - the Web has spawned creativity and innovation online amid a collective desire to ease suffering.


Once the magnitude of the March 11 disaster became clear, the online world began asking, "How can we help?"

And for that, social media offered the ideal platform for good ideas to spread quickly, supplementing efforts launched by giants like Google and Facebook.

A British teacher living in Abiko city, just east of Tokyo, is leading a volunteer team of bloggers, writers and editors producing a collection of reflections and images of the earthquake that will be sold in the coming days as a digital publication.

All proceeds from the "Quakebook" project will go to the Japanese Red Cross, said the 40-year-old, who goes by the pseudonym "Our Man in Abiko."

The entirely Twitter-sourced project started with a single tweet exactly a week after the earthquake. Within an hour, he had received two submissions, which soon grew to the 87 that now comprise the 98-page book.

Social Media becoming popular in India: Report

Although the use of social media by Indians was first highlighted during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, social media tools is being effectively used by a cross section of society in India, says a report of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

"The Indian social media scene represents a fast-emerging and influential domain of information exchange involving nearly 60 per cent of the 83 million Internet users in the country," said the DNI report titled, "Overview of Leading Indian Social Media" .

"While Facebook and Orkut continue to dominate the social media scene, Twitter and some other Indian micro blogging websites are also becoming very popular.

The rising significance of social media in India is demonstrated by the fact that almost all the conventional media have registered their presence on the social networking websites," the report said.

According to DNI, which has based its report on open source information, in a recent instance, pressure from social media appeared to force conventional media to report on the alleged links between some noted journalists and a lobbyist.

"The lobbyist is being investigated for her role in an alleged telecommunications spectrum allocation scandal, over which IT and Communications Minister A Raja had to resign.

While the conventional media were accused of overlooking the story, Twitterati kept on building pressure for media discussion, making it virtually impossible for conventional media to ignore," it said.