Terror attack:  Techies ‘twitter’ to communicate
By Techgirl and DJ Varma

On July 25, murderous terrorists struck the peaceful, cosmopolitan tech hub of Bangalore.  The terrorists aim was to cause fear and inflict economic damage to the increasingly prosperous Indian society.   The tech sector in India’s Silicon Valley paused, took stock of the situation and bravely soldiered on.  Even on the day of the attack while some mobile phones did not work for short periods, landlines and internet worked well.  Many tech-savvy locals ‘twittered’ to keep in contact.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send real time updates (or tweets) via SMS to their websites and/or via SMSes to friends and colleagues.  A number of popular bloggers in India like Kiruba Shankar and Meenakshi Madhavan have been using Twitter for many months

Bangalore-based Mukund Mohan is the CEO of BuzzGain. A successful three-time entrepreneur, having sold 2 other companies, he was VP of Marketing for Inovis, a leading B2B software provider based in Atlanta. He was head of product marketing for Mercury (acquired by HP) responsible for the direction and customer success of the company's Application Management solutions. Prior to Mercury, Mukund was Vice President of Operations at Conslient, a software company focused on process automation. In this role, he managed a team of sales and services personnel and was responsible for customer success.

Techgoss spoke to Mukund about the twitter phenomenon during the terrorist attacks.

Q. - How useful was twitter during the terrorist attacks?
A. (Mukund Mohan) - would rate twitter as very useful. There are 3 primary reasons.  Firstly, at the time of the attack, most people were at work, which meant television was not easily accessible, and Internet sites were not reporting the blasts yet. Twitter was the only source of breaking news about the blasts. Secondly, communication with mobile phones was inconsistent and spotty at best so the only way you could learn more was via the web.  Last but not the least, there were a lot of rumors and innuendo being tossed around, primarily word of mouth, so it was important to clarify fact from fiction. The twitter crowd primarily consisted of people who were genuinely interested in sharing and learning the facts, which made it more useful.

Q. - Is there any way to quantify (or even an educated guess) on how many techies were using twitter in Bangalore and/or India during these terrorist attacks?
A. - My suspicion is that there were about 10+ technology professionals who were sharing information they knew about the blasts in Bangalore. This was supplemented by about another 20+ people looking for more information and about 100+ others (outside Bangalore) who were looking to learn more. From my twitter replies and the search, I think these numbers are fairly accurate.

Q. - How accurate were twitter reports as opposed to Print media/TV stations?
A. - What I learned from twitter was mostly accurate. I would say almost everything I learned from twitter was correct, factual and useful. The TV stations were also pretty much on the mark in terms of accuracy, but there was a lot of other information shared by TV stations which were more on the opinion, side interests aspects. So watching TV made it difficult to just get the basics since there was so much other information being shared. Print media did not figure into the equation until much later on. 

Q. -   How long was the phone system knocked out in Bangalore?  Was SMS and internet available most of the time?
A. - I don’t think the entire phone system was knocked out in Bangalore. Just mobile phone usage was spotty. SMS and Internet both worked fine for me and I heard the same from most others. I did try a few land line calls to other land lines and they seemed to work fine. The mobile phone (voice) system was probably not functional for about an hour or two maximum for me and others working close to where I was.

Techgoss note:  Website pluggd.in which reports on Indian business and startups also set up a Twitter group for its readers to communicate with each other during the day.