The medias attention are these days focused on the hurricane Sandy in New York, providing us with the latest news and pictures from the tragic event. But as a reader and social network user, you get a feeling when reading the latest articles, that this is old news, because the situation constantly changes and new updates occur. The Guardian are actually trying to bring a live element into some of their articles by providing frequent updates including videos and pictures, but still manually edited and still not real-time. News and static social media updates presented by the Guardian. In times like this where we want to follow an event rather than people, we cannot use our traditional social networks and relations, because they will probably not be where the actions is - or at least very few will. We want to follow and support the people in New York, what they are going through, their emotions, pictures and updates - live. Twitter users can search the tags #Sandy #NewYork or #Hurricane and see what people are writing - but only on Twitter, we are still missing pictures from Flickr, checkins with updates and pictures and Facebook updates. So to follow the event real-time you need to search several social networks. From Gignal's perspective, our news should be connected to a real-time stream, showing the latest updates from local eyewitnesses, combined with the latest news coverage from the media. The stream can be moderated so only high quality content is included, or it can show the voice of the crowd uncut. What's important is that we include the voice of the crowd - which most journalists already are listening to anyway, to get the latest updates and to verify sources and stories. Latest updates from citizens and users from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Foursquare. Have you seen any great examples of media combining real-time citizen content with their news coverage?
