The following sentence leaped out at me from an article I was recently reading in the June 12 print edition of The Economist that was all about changes in Iraq:
The sentence claims:
“… 261,000 Iraqis subscribe to the internet, against almost none before the war.”
It really got me thinking about those 261,000 Iraqis and how they are using the Internet.
Here are some of the questions that jumped into my mind immediately after reading the sentence:
Do Iraqis blog?
Do Iraqis use Twitter?
What news websites do they frequently read?
Is the Internet usable given the unstable power grid?
Where are they accessing the Internet? From Internet cafes? Actual cafes? At home? At school? At work?
Are they using the Internet for business? Communication? News? All of D above?
Damn. So many questions popped into my head regarding how those 261,000 are using the Internet.
I don’t know about you but I’d love to follow a Baghdad resident on Twitter. Especially if they were Twittering recent happenings, conditions and normal life in Baghdad. Right?
And, I’m not exactly talking about American soldiers or journalists living in Baghdad since they probably weren’t included in the 261,000 number. I’m talking about Iraqis born and raised in Baghdad.
Hey @Ev, @Biz and @Jack, let’s get some of those 261,000 Iraqis on Twitter.
It would be awesome to connect with some of them in a personal way that’s not filtered by New York Times’ journalists, CNN or any other news source covering Iraq.
We can call it Operation Baghdad Tweets.
