Weibo Power Content Summary

Introduction Everything starts with "push"

James Barker's message on Twitter is only one word: "Arrested".

The news finally got him out of prison and inspired me to write a book. However, at 9: 33 am on April 10, 2008, when Dambach was taken to a detention center in Mahara, Egypt, we didn't realize this.

Buck is a graduate student majoring in photojournalism at the University of California, Berkeley. The purpose of his coming to this city is to film a strike caused by food.

A few days ago, street violence became ubiquitous. Someone is setting fire and someone is injured. The police waved batons to disperse the crowd and arrested several demonstrators.

On April 10, Buck took a cautious approach. He stayed away from the protesters and captured his story with a telephoto lens.

Finally, he was caught.

I still know something about the Egyptian police. In 2007, as part of my "Global Social Media Report" blog series, I interviewed Wael Abbas (@ WaelAbbas). Abbas, an Egyptian journalist, has been posting videos of "suspects" who have not been charged being tortured in Egyptian police stations on YouTube.

It was not until I saw the word "arrested" on Twitter that I realized that this new social media communication tool had become so popular.

I don't know James Barker. Before this news, I didn't follow him on Twitter. I didn't even know there was a connection between me and him.

People who leave messages on Twitter are called "tweeter". When a Twitter user reads another Twitter user's message and thinks it is worth repeating, he or she will add the letter RT in front of the message and post it again. Later, another person may see this message and repeat this step. This behavior is called "forwarding" and it is a necessary procedure for news to spread quickly on Twitter.

It is the sharp push that makes Twitter magical: you may only follow a small number of people, or only be followed by a small number of people. However, even if only one person pays attention to you, you can connect with millions of people who use Twitter all over the world through many separate spaces.

James Barker is a new user of Twitter. He has only a few fans; As I pointed out, I am not one of them. But a friend of his forwarded this "arrested" news to me with a short explanation. A friend of mine saw the news and forwarded it. I'm only four steps away from buck. I saw it about 30 minutes after he posted the news from the police car.

A few weeks ago, when Danbach said goodbye to a group of friends in Berkeley, one of his friends suggested that he use Twitter. This friend thinks that if there is an emergency, it might be good if his BlackBerry can get on Twitter.

Danbach is sitting in the detention center.

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