YouTube becoming important source of real-time, location-based info

location based services

Last Spring, I predicted (after Colbert's White House Correspondents' Dinner appearance got so many hits) that YouTube might become an important source of real-time information from citizen journalists during a terror attack or natural disaster.This Here and Now story documents that's already happened in Lebanon and Israel, where average citizens are filing footage daily about the fighting, with an immediacy that the network news crews can't hope for. Yes, as with blogs, you have to take everything you see with a grain of salt, but remember that there are a lot more of US than there are journalists, FEMA workers, firefighters, etc., so there's always that chance that you or I will be the ones to see something critical happening.(Aside to FEMA Director David Paulison: during this hurricane season, make certain that you have at least one staffer monitoring YouTube, the blogs and wikis that will spring up within hours of a disaster -- it could save lives....).