Social media, whatever you think of it, has had a profound influence on the world.
Now more so than ever, considering the recent events in the Middle East and now in England.
The ability of groups to be instantly mobilised has proved to be a real headache for the British coppers. While they were in one place trying to gain control, the mob was in another looting and pillaging.
This wasn’t a real surprise as we have seen the same scenario, only reversed, played out in Egypt last February.
What was so surprising in the UK was the social media response, to the events.
An @Riotcleanup Twitter page was created by a London musician, Sam Duckworth, and now has over 85,000 followers.
They turned up with brooms in hand the morning after the London riots ready to put things right.
At the same time the London Metropolitan Police has published a set of photos of suspects on Flickr. While a Google group is using facial recognition technology to identify thugs from the photos.
Even eBay has promised to remove from their site any property that appears to have come from the looters.
How they will do that I am not sure.
Twitter has said it won’t shut down its service siting freedom of expression.
The interesting thing is that the same freedom of expression and social media tools will be used against the morons who started the whole thing off in the first place.
Like any media it has its good and bad uses.
It’s ultimately not the fault of the media but the way people use it.
