At 5:22 (IST) Thursday, Andrew Richardson, Creative Director at News Digital Media, sent this message on Twitter:

No original reporting, but I’m sure this qualifies as “link journalism” as defined by Scott Karp, the man who coined the term.

Based an many articles last week, this tweet also falls into the category of “citizen journalism.”

Is this an example of “citizen link journalism?”

Regardless of the terminology, it was happening in every 2 of 5 “Mumbai” tweets for a little over 15 minutes.

I used a Yahoo Pipe to retrieve the last 500 tweets that contained the word “Mumbai” on Wednesday night. The first of those 500 tweets came in five seconds before 11:45 p.m. (GMT).

The pipe then filtered out any tweets that didn’t contain “http://”, and spat out a final feed with 209 remaining (link-laden) tweets. Over 40% of the “Mumbai” tweets posted within those 15 minutes linked to other Web sites.

The frequency of hyperlinks was obvious to anyone watching Twitter that night. In a blog post by Mindy McAdams, a reader named “Scott” observed:

“Twitter, it appeared to me, was spreading the news, or connecting people with the news, more than it was breaking news. Not that it hasn’t or can’t break news … I just didn’t see it in this case. And spreading/connecting is a highly valuable thing.”

What I want to know is this: When global news breaks, does any established news organization have the means to spread news and connect people as quickly as “citizens” can with Twitter? Please leave your comments below.

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