The recent Lululemon murder trial provided an opportunity to literally monitor the trial in great detail, in near real-time, from anywhere literally in the world. I followed the courtroom action via Twitter by saving the hashtag search term #lululemon. A hashtag is a way to filter the billions of tweets (Twitter messages) down to the item of interest. In this case, the reporters and courtroom observers who were live tweeting during the trial included the hashtag search term #lululemon in their 140 character messages; thereby allowing virtual observers like myself to follow the action by searching on that term. And by saving the search, I didn’t have to reenter it every time I wanted to check in to see what happened. I was able to follow the action on all of my internet devices i.e. the desktop computer, iPad, and of course iPhone. The fact that the tweets were coming literally within seconds after the events occurred in the courtroom, along with commentary from those following the hashtag, provided an extraordinary opportunity to sit in on the trial. And you got much more detail and intimacy in the reporting than you would get just by reading the next day’s news in the paper or watching the local news on TV. Since Montgomery County does not allow live TV broadcasts from the courtroom, this is literally the next best thing and in some ways better as it is more interactive. Congratulations to reporters like Neal Augenstein (@augensteinWTOP) and Erin Donaghue (@BethesdaPatch) for a job really well done. I suspect that we will see this all over again when and if Curtis Lopez comes to trial for the killing of Jane McQuain and her 11-year old son William McQuain.
