Every time a new technology is introduced the majority of the people are skeptical. How can we use this and do we really need this? I remember ten years ago when the mobile phone became populair. I also remember me being against it. I despised guys or girls showing off their new mobile phones and 8-bit ringtones. I still hate the ringtones but I’m a vivid smartphone user. Back then I just couldn’t see the advantages and now I can’t live without it. The same is happening to Twitter. How can a service which limits you to 140 characters a post be of any value? It’s looks like a tool for exhibitionists wanting to vent their whole life. Slowly but surely we come to see what Twitter is really capable of. This became clear to me last week. I got a call from my girlfriend telling me that a colleague of her was stranded on the Utrecht Central train station because of a bomb threat. I had to travel to Utrecht that day so I checked the biggest Dutch news website (nu.nl) to see if there were any reports. Nothing. A search on Google also returned irrelevant results. I went to twitter.com and typed in “Utrecht” in the big search box and instantly I got all the information I wanted. Twitter users posting updates about the bomb threat were in abundance. Every second 50 new bits of information were added. I got to see pictures taken with mobile phones of the secluded area’s. I got the latest updates on what police officers were telling the public. This is the way citizen journalism works. The hive mind gave me a lot of information very quickly. That beings said it is important to be careful with the information being posted on Twitter. The facts are not checked and the information may be false which, for instance, can lead to celebrities being declared dead who are still much alive. Even Though Twitter is proving to be very valuable for citizen journalism and journalism as a whole. Next time I want to be updated on the latest information of an event I know where I’m going: Twitter.