Energency and Twitter – Now the Quake

October 31, 2007 at 10:12 am · Filed under Emergency, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile, Mobile Phones, Robert Scoble, Social Computing, Twitter, Twittergram, University

I think now that the point is made – Twitter is currently THE BEST TOOL for communicating widely in an emergency

(ParisLemon) Another day, another show of Twitter’s true power. Barely a week after the Southern California fires began and Twitter helped get out important messages to people, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake hits the Bay Area and info about is posted numerous times on Twitter before the ground is even done shaking. It’s barely been 30 minutes and already I have 4 solid pages of earthquake news and insight.

Ariel Waldman posted the first tweet about it (that I saw) and from there nearly ever blogger/tech geek/person in the entirity of the Bay Area has posted in on the quake – and many of the multiple times. I knew the exact location and magnitude before the story had even hit the news.

I say again, this is the power of Twitter.

Not only does it get your message out – but it uses very small amounts of the cell network and so can often get through when an overload crashes the system. Robert Scoble sent out a Twittergram to his list including Maryam his wife. With a Twittergram you can use voice. So you can in effect use the cell phone system without overloading it.

I think that the ubiquity of cell phones means that any organization now can have a Twitter Emergency Strategy – you can of course link this to a complementing Facebook strategy too.

So imagine a fire in your office – or an epidemic in the school – or a shooter at your university – a flood in your region – with Twitter, you can reach most people affected and then you can keep them updated – all it requires is that you have a plan and get them following as a precaution. Not hard!

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Social Media – News – The Fire – KPBS

October 28, 2007 at 11:47 am · Filed under Emergency, Enterprise 2.0, KPBS, Mobile Phones, NPR, News, PBS, Public Media, Social Media, Twitter, University, Web 2.0

Here is a short but informative report by NPR on KPBS’s historic use of Social Media to cover the fire. One of the key Apps was “My Maps” -

The Google map has had over 1.2 million hits and even the fire fighters used it as The Source. Google themlseves have been a huge help and gave support to KPBS as the load on the map increased.

I think that the fire and KPBS’s work has been a watershed for public broadcasting – their work has shown that a small station with few staff can offer the public a huge service in an emergency.

More – it also shows universities who are all struggling to find a process to help their own communities in an emergency such as the recent shootings can do so in an affordable manner.

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