Twittering During Tornados
Living in the Bay Area, we have noticed that we reach for our phones to Twitter the second we feel an earthquake. It looks like Anne Jackson has discovered that Twitter can play a helpful role during Tornados too.
even though they were hiding in closets and basements, they could know exactly where the tornado was because of twitter.Update: Mark has been using the Twitter track feature to follow events like Tornados and collected quite a few updates as they rolled in.
For a while now I’ve been tracking a number of keywords in Twitter to see the flow of conversation around certain topics. It happens that I’ve been tracking CNN and tornado for a while. Little did I know that these two tracks would seem to merge. With last night’s tornado rolling through downtown Atlanta the play by play, via Twitter.
9 Comments:
thanks for the link love :)
leave it to anne jackson to use technology to her advantage!
I need help w/my twitter login. I
've submitted to help and contact us two times (maybe three) no one has contacted me. Please send me to the correct person. My email is wtfroflmfao at gmail dot com
thank you.
Great to hear others are thinking along the same lines, I posted this a week back when the tornadoes were here in Georgia.
http://noodleheadstudios.com/index.php/New-Media-Marketing/How-can-you-update-your-family-in-an-emergency-Use-Twitter.html
My favorite Twitter story right now is an example of this which happened on the way to SXSW: I was driving to Austin and saw a tweet from Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid) saying:
Anyone driving to Austin from Dallas tonight? Stranded at DFW with 2 friends,. Hotel and car rental situation not looking good here :(
I was still north of Memphis, but tweeted back that I'd be happy to give him and friends a ride if he hadn't found one by the time I got to Dallas. Five minutes later, I got a call from Brian Clark (@copyblogger) who called to tell me that the road conditions in Dallas were totally impassable and not to go to the airport under any circumstances. As it turned out, Hugh found a ride and I ended up getting a room for the night before I reached Dallas anyway.
But the interesting thing to me about the whole exchange was that it wouldn't have happened via any of the other communication tools I use… with email, chat or phone I wouldn't have known Hugh's situation unless he specifically reached out to me. Likewise, Brian wouldn't have seen my reply and called to warn me about the several hundred cars that had gone off the road in Dallas. Twitter becomes almost like a sixth sense in these situations, with extremely targeted, relevant information finding you when you need it… without having to even know that you should be searching for it (I was aware that there was snow in Dallas, and I guess I'd have expected that Texans don't drive well in snow, but I had no idea that most of the roads were blocked that night).
Pretty cool really!
No I know the best place to go next time there's a natural disaster in California. I have no doubt that Twitter is a better source of information than CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined!
Kari Dean
Interesting!
I live in DFW and we had a close call a week or so ago ( Tornado touchdown about 45 miles SW of here, they travel SW to NE ). I used twitter to get some updates out since a couple Dallas people follow me. It's easier to get one tweet out vs. multiple txt's
I really enjoyed the webinar, especially the informal, relaxed atmosphere. Thanks
Remember- Tweets should- be quick, be brief, be gone!
Kathy Pop (fairly new twitlet)
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