Mumbai is a social media-savvy city. It is also a magnet for terrorists who engage in acts of spectacular violence. During July 14th’s destructive terrorist attacks, Mumbai’s residents did not just out-report conventional news networks. When the bombings occurred during evening rush hour, shutting down transit networks throughout the famously congested city, residents also kicked in to use the power of cloud computing to help.
Shortly after the Mumbai bombs went off, residents (and outside sympathizers) began distributing links to a massive, editable Google Docs spreadsheet called MumbaiHelp with the names, addresses and phone numbers of residents who could offer their houses to stranded commuters or contact strangers’ loved ones to let them know they were okay. The massive volume of calls after the explosions temporarily brought down mobile-phone coverage around Mumbai.
The spreadsheet was primarily passed around Twitter and Facebook, with hundreds of retweets and shares helping to disseminate the information. The spreadsheet’s creator, New Delhi-based IT professional Nitin Sagar, lives more than 800 miles away from Mumbai.
Sagar’s spreadsheet took an elegant idea and ran with it. A large number of Mumbai residents were posting personal information on Twitter in order to assist stranded commuters with informal crashpads. However, hashtags related to the bombings such as #needhelp and #heretohelp were crowded with noise and difficult to search. In the end, the MumbaiHelp spreadsheet reportedly contained the names of more than 400 locals ready to offer assistance.
Meanwhile, upstart social-media curation tool Storyful rose to the occasion by creating a masterful Mumbai terrorist attack page that offered better online coverage than Indian media or international giants such as The New York Times and The Guardian. Storyful works through a proprietary platform that integrates still images, Tweets, video, and other social media products into a single storyboard.
Storyful’s coverage integrated reports from Indian television stations with Google Maps mashups and on-the-ground reports from Twitter users. The three explosions, which reportedly killed 21, took place in crowded commercial and tourist locations in Mumbai.
