As Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Dan Farber of CNet and many others have reported Twitter and social media in general are playing a huge part in receiving accurate and timely information from the crisis in Mumbai.
It's true social media opens many personal opportunities... to flatten your company's ladder, to enable passion in any niche space, to truly listen to your customers, constituents or opponents... but surely filling in this vital communication gap, reporting on a critical and emotionally charged event in a personal and unfiltered way, enabling people to keep closer to events effecting their families... is enough for me to say these channels are here to stay. Yes some folks tweet very inane events of their life, but today even skeptics need to step back and see just what these open channels allow.