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Social media - no longer a gimmick

"Twitter represents a collective collaboration that manifests our ability to unconsciously connect kindred voices through the experiences that move us. As such, Twitter is a human seismograph.

"Twitter represents a collective collaboration that manifests our ability to unconsciously connect kindred voices through the experiences that move us. As such, Twitter is a human seismograph." - Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks

"Twitter is a great place to tell the world what you're thinking before you've had a chance to think about it." - Chris Pirillo, blogger

None of us should have been surprised by the incredible response to the story of the sled dog deaths on social networks.

And yet many of us were.

Perhaps it wasn't the use of the medium as much as it was the incredible reach of the information to all parts of the world, and then in response, the comments back that caught us off guard.

It didn't help that so many of them were vitriolic and anonymous. Whistler was tried and convicted before all the facts were even established.

It's easy to lash out using a keyboard as weapon. Thankfully in today's world digital fingerprints and trails can be followed so the anonymous nature of networking is changing.

Somehow the use of Facebook, Twitter and cell phones work when it is helping to overthrow governments far away as it has done recently in Tunisia and Egypt.

Said Brad Shimmin, principal analyst with Current Analysis recently on the Egyptian uprising: "I certainly do not think (President Hosni Mubarak) would have left office at this point if it wasn't for social networking tools."

Egyptian activists didn't simply look for people to "like" their protest pages or to give people a venue to express their frustrations. They used social networking sites to encourage them into action, not just online but in the real world.

Now the pattern might be repeating in Algeria and elsewhere.

We saw the same thing happen with the sled dog death story - though on a much more modest scale.

A Facebook site created to call for a boycott of the adventure company whose employee allegedly killed the dogs grew from a few hundred when the story broke Jan. 31 to over 50,000 this week.

Using Facebook and Twitter, marches were organized in support of changing animal cruelty laws or just in support of dogs. They were held in B.C., across Canada and even in Italy's famous Colosseum long known for its cruel treatment of lions used as executioners of Christians and others who offended the Empire.

The first-ever doggie tweetup was held in West Vancouver Feb. 6. It was organized solely online using the hashtag #BarkingMad and drew a few hundred people.

More marches still are planned as animal activists use the story as a launch pad to push for the many agendas they are working on.

Social networks are filled with emotional, compelling stories of things happening all around us - and all over the world. Not many of us stop for a moment and think about the truth of what we are reading or its source.

Many of us post back or send the news on by re-tweet.

In today's "media of the immediate" the push is to post something even if you are not entirely sure if it's true. After all you can always re-post and correct the information.

Again, when things are far away that may work. But for those living the story is that the best way forward?

In a recent New York Times column, The Public Editor, that truth was brought home for that eminent establishment of journalism. It reported for a few brief minutes that Representative Gabrielle Giffords was dead of gunshot wounds. You may recall that she was in fact seriously wounded when a gunman took the lives of six others during an assassination attempt in Arizona Jan.8.

According to the column the error was due in part to lack of editing but also the rush to get the story posted.

The media world is a different place today than it was even a few months ago. Almost every outlet, including Pique, has a web page where daily stories are posted and sometimes updated several times as happened with the unfolding story of the sled dog deaths.

Then there are the Facebook and Twitter accounts to post news to as well.

And there is immediate feedback too. Users wanting more information as fast as it can be gathered - citizen journalists.

One of the challenges with social networking is that everyone is trying to fit what they are hearing and sharing into an existing framework often before all the facts are known.

It used to be that a journalist would never publish a story until the facts were checked and confirmed by more than one source. Now it is common to read news on media websites explaining a story just as a flash of information with the words "more to come" at the end. It is expected that the reader will understand that the media outlet is running with what it knows so far and will correct and add to the story as information is gathered.

But many users don't keep checking so they tweet or Facebook whatever they have read at that moment and as Whistler saw the results can be viral in coverage. And what if the information is wrong or misleading because it is incomplete?

In Egypt that meant for a while those on a Facebook page devoted to protesters read that live ammunition was being fired and there was a massacre. That, of course, was not true.

So what is the truth behind the sled dog death story? We will have to wait for investigators to tell us. And when they do Pique will search for comment and publish a complete story in the paper..........and online.