Jakarta bombings first on Twitter
By Hedirman Supian, TODAY | Posted: 18 July 2009 0830 hrs

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JAKARTA: Mr Daniel Tumiwa beat most major news outlets, twittering about the bombings.

"Bom @ marriot and ritz Carlton kuningan jakarta," the 38-year-old digital media head posted from his Blackberry, shortly after the second bomb went off at the hotel he was staying at - the Ritz Carlton.

A follow-up tweet reported: "Left location. Shocked. Lots of blood. Breakfast meetings at coffee shops while bombs went off."

One of the first to tweet about the bomb blasts, Mr Tumiwa was sought out by news outlets like Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN. "I just wanted to warn people from coming to the area," he told Today.

"I'm here, there's a bomb, it's real - I'm not kidding ... I just wish I could have done something more for everybody."

As during the Mumbai hotel attacks last November, updates from people on the ground helped make the blasts a top-trending topic on Twitter, a service where users post short updates to their online followers.

Photos posted by the likes of Mr Andre Siregar, another Ritz-Carlton guest, were quickly used by international news outlets.

The Indonesian, who is based in Singapore, was reportedly one of the first to post an image on Twitter - a photo of the carnage at the hotel's restaurant.

The two hotels, also, quickly tapped the Internet.

Within two hours of the attack, the Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotel groups used their Twitter accounts to extend their sympathies to the victims and their families, providing contact numbers for them to get more information.

On its blog, Marriott posted a statement on how police and hotel security staff had responded and how guests had been evacuated and moved to other hotels.

But Netizens also had to take updates with a pinch of salt - rumours on supposedly related explosions in other parts of the city and more scheduled bomb blasts also made up the chatter on Facebook and Twitter.

- TODAY