Friday, January 16, 2009

Microblogging the US Airways Miracle

There was an interesting article in the Guardian about how the Hudson River plane crash provided yet more proof about how interconnected and connected we are. The most immediate and compelling reports and images of the event did not come from the media, but from citizens. 

This approach has been referred to as mobcasting or citizen media reporting like that which occurred during the Virginia Tech tragedy, the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai,  or even a power outage that occurred yesterday in Toronto. A person even twittered while still on a plane as it burned on the runway in Denver in December 2008. Heck, even Santa Twittered. 

The news about the Hudson River crash was all over Twitter within minutes. One of the earliest reports came from New Yorker who uploaded a photo of the plane floating in the river (Note: Everyone in the world is trying to access it, so the site is VERY slow and the 'reporter get their 15 minutes of fame) Within minutes, Twitter friends were repeating (retweeting) the plane crash messages or had found the original post using the Twitter search service.

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