Feed the map

Some of the first news reports of the Boston Marathon bombing didn't come from any traditional news source. Instead, they popped up on Twitter and Instagram, two popular social media services where people can post messages, photos and videos almost instantaneously from their mobile phones.

If you're a news reporter or a law enforcement officer, what better way to verify an event than by people who are tweeting and photographing from the scene?

Now, a Naples company called Geofeedia has figured out a way to map the tweets, photos and videos that people post from their mobile devices within seconds.