G20 protests today: The revolution will be Twittered

I work near Brick Lane, just past the unofficial border between East London and the Square Mile.

Aside from a police helicopter hovering overhead, it was all peaceful. Had I walked west to Bishopsgate and the Bank of England, it would probably have been different.

The day before the G20 summit saw thousands of people express their anger with the City of London.

Demonstrations took place outside the Bank of England, while protests outside the Royal Bank of Scotland resulted in clashes with police.

The Waterloo and City line, which connects Waterloo and Bank, was suspended, while Bank station was closed.

Some staff waved ten pound notes at the protestors, like a minority of police did during the 1984-5 miners strike.

A few protestors were stopped for driving an armoured car, but were later allowed to go about their business, while police had a water cannon ready for serious riots.

Guardian, Times, Sky News and Financial Times journalists were Twittering from the event, and providing some nice coverage of the change in police tactics and the Blitz spirit of some bankers, one of whom told a Guardian journalist he was prepared to take protestors on as he served in the Army.

It would be interesting to see if any of the tweets on alleged police overreactions are followed up.

Twitter is fantastic for covering big events and the ways of allowing people to view them outside the microblogging service worked well.

Daniel Bennett writes that the Guardian embedded Twitter in a web page while Sky News and the Times used CoverItLive. The Financial Times simply used Twitter.

This is the issue with Twitter, how to use it to tweet to a wider audience. The Guardian managed it well.

It would be nice if there was a way of saving tweets on Twitter for display so the Guardian could show a record of what happened today, although of course there were also articles.

With Twitter about to try to make money, will this be an option? It would really only be needed for news events.

media140 will be hosting London’s first microblogging event, where journalists, bloggers and publishers will discuss the use and impact of Twitter and other social media tools for their industry.

A few dozen tickets are still on sale at £35 each, and Kate Day from the Daily Telegraph will tweet from the event.