Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Twitter's New Service Legitimizes It's Role In Emergencies

            Whether it be the first image of Captain Sullenburger’s heroic landing of the US Airways flight in the Hudson river (Qualman, 2012)
Image from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/boeing-777-crash-san-francisco-581322
it was not the newspaper reporter or roving network news anchor and his/her camera person that broke the story. Social media users, the users of Twitter in both of these instances, broke these stories and provided information as the situation developed.
With Twitter being at the forefront of such breaking news, it should come as no surprise that Twitter has announced “Twitter Alerts”. (Wagner, 2013)
Image from https://blog.twitter.com/2013/twitter-alerts-critical-information-when-you-need-it-most
  This is a new feature that allows organization such as The Red Cross, FEMA, The World Health Organization, among others to send out “…important and accurate information from credible organizations during an emergency…” This will work by allowing the user to receive a push notification or SMS aka text messages, if they have subscribed to the senders alerts. This provides yet another way to inform the public with important and needed information.

            Combine this new alert service and the presence of traditional media outlets on the site. Twitter is becoming a legitimate source of news and information while still remaining a strong social medial platform. 

References
Daunt, T. (2013, July 06). Sf plane crash: Social media is key first responder. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/boeing-777-crash-san-francisco-581322

Qualman, E. (2012). Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business [kindle edition]. (2nd ed., p. 15). Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons.

Wagner, K. (2013, Sept 25). Twitter unveils emergency alert system. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2013/09/25/twitter-alert-system/


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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 25, 2013 at 6:24 PM

    Well that is a great use of Twitter! People carry their mobile devices everywhere, and they will be able to update in an emergency or get an update when they are away. Its nice to see social media used for something good instead of people posting when they went to the grocery store or where they ate their lunch.

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  2. AnonymousSeptember 26, 2013 at 10:23 AM

    I believe that Twitter was on to something with this and would love for them to take it one step forward if anyway possible. I would like to see a mass message sent to every Twitter user for Amber alerts for children. Could you imagine if within seconds every single user gets a tweet stating child's name and last known location.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 26, 2013 at 2:17 PM

    Mobile Amber Alerts you say? http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/safety/index.cfm/AID/12082

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  4. AnonymousSeptember 27, 2013 at 8:31 AM

    Such a good idea - I like knowing what's going on in the world without relying on everyone I see telling me a different story. Even though the news often reports it wrong in the beginning too, at least you feel like you're getting "fairly accurate" info - and I think Twitter-wide Amber alerts & Silver alerts is an excellent idea.

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