Social Experiment: Get #Twaffic Updates here!

Late today afternoon, I had a thought to crowd-source traffic information via Twitter, just for Nairobi. I passed on the idea to fellow Iborian tweeps (twitter-people) and response is slow but sure, sure. Not wanting to sound cliche, however, we are a peculiar people. If M-Pesa worked 'on' us and refuses to work in TZ, what else could? I wonder...

So this is how it would/could work. When in traffic, be it slow or fast anyone who's on twitter may tweet the traffic situation on the road they are using with the hashtag #Twaffic to show it is a traffic update and the hashtag #yourRoad refering to whichever road the tweep is using. For example

"#twaffic #JogooRd Very clear. No need to use Eastleigh route..."

or

"#twaffic There is a parking lot on #UhuruHighway Just popped out to the Iko-Toilet to take a leak and I'm back!"

Now, with everyone sending in such info, knowing the traffic situation before you leave for work/home or as you are driving would be as easy as checking your #twaffic updates! Easy peasy, right? Of course, you hope fellow tweeps on #yourRoad do the same, thus result for #twaffic + #yourRoad are more useful. For those who have not used the summize search tool for twitter, it is available at search.twitter.com

Let's see if we can do this tweeple! It'll benefit us all, heck, we can even have a hitch-hikers club (actually *carpooling*) like this one!

Further Reading: This is just part one of the social experiment. If it goes as planned we could make it a bit juicier maybe by also tagging the traffic situation (go ahead if you could though), i.e.

#Level1 - Clear/Cruising

#Level2 - Almost Clear/Afew stops though

#Level3 - Moderate/Slow but moving

#Level4 - Very Slow/Almost at a standstill

#Level5 - Parking Lot/Please use another route if you can

PS: Hash tags were not actually invented by the Founding Fathers (@ev and @biz) they were actually trended into being... :-)