When a major news event occurs, naturally, news stations and websites are often the first place readers go to get the latest information. With society and technology changing, however, social media has taken a step ahead of traditional media and has proved to be a reliable source for breaking news information.
When U.S Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the icy waters of the Hudson River last week, witnesses watched from their high-rise buildings, trying to decipher what had just taken place. The jetliner with 155 people on board had lost power in both engines after hitting a flock of birds’ shortly after departing from La Guardia Airport. Now national hero, Pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger, landed the plane safely (miraculously) in the river avoiding a disaster and saving the life of every passenger and flight attendant on board.
News of the crash spread instantaneously over the micro-blogging site Twitter, by New York City-based users witnessing the crash live. They were sharing pictures and first-hand accounts well before any TV networks were on-site. The first Twitter feed was a post by Janis Krums of Sarasota, Florida who had arrived to the scene on ferry just a few minutes after the jetliner had plunged into the Hudson. He had posted a picture on TwitPic (a tool that allows you to share photos on Twitter) just ten minutes after the crash, with a caption reading, “There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.” It was one of the first photos posted about the incident and has now been viewed by over 90,000 people.
Janis Krums' Photo of US Airways Flight 1549 in The Hudson River
The power of social media continues to connect people, media and technology. By embracing this power, sites like Twitter and Facebook are becoming an essential part of modern society and communication, and are playing a role in the diminished usage and relevancy of more traditional media outlets.
The Hudson crash is yet another example of social media out-performing traditional media.
Tags: Boston public relations, Chesley B. Sullenberger, new media, Social Media, Social Networking, U.S Airways Flight 1549, Web 2.0
Heat 
January 22, 2009 at 4:06 pm |
Brie,
Great post. This is just another example of how social media is changing the speed at which we receive information and our lives. Interesting enough, Yahoo BOSS Engineer Vik Singh recently created TweetNews. This will take Yahoo’s news results and compare them to emerging topics on Twitter. By doing this the most popular items on Twitter will be used as an index for determining the importance of news stories.
By doing this news stories will be judged by tweets as opposed to inbound links to judge relevance.
Scott Gilbertson on Wired recently wrote a great piece that goes into more detail: http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/01/twitter-yahoo-b.html