Energency and Twitter - Now the Quake
by Rob Paterson
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!
