The minute news broke of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, sites like Twitter were inundated with a huge volume of messages. An estimated 80 messages, or "tweets," were being sent to Twitter every five seconds, providing eyewitness updates.

Many Twitter users also sent pleas for blood donors to make their way to specific hospitals in Mumbai where doctors were faced with low stocks and rising casualties. Others sent information about helplines and contact numbers for those who had friends and relatives caught up in the attacks

However, a vast number of the posts on Twitter amounted to unsubstantiated rumors and wild inaccuracies. As blogger Tim Mallon put it, "I started to see an ugly side to Twitter, far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news it was actually an incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets and re-re-tweets...

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