searchengineman

Searchengineman,  8/20/2009

August 20, 2009 a rare occurrence took place in Toronto, Ontario. multiple tornados touched down in the city. About 60,000 residents lost power, no cell service, cars overturned, roofs removed. Scary. Listening to the radio, I was frustrated by the lack of hard news during the tornado in that 1/2 an hour.

Searching regular services such as Google, Yahoo, MSN yielded little results.

The news on the radio is not as fast as twitter.

Even Toronto’s Cable pulse 24 live news I could not get any hard up to the minute information.

Frustrated since I still had power, I proceeded to Twitter. This was the first time observing the speed of the Twitter service in action.

What was impressive was the reports on the radio, were only arriving literally 5-6 minutes after Twitter. I wonder if CFRB1010 was watching the feed?

Yeah that’s me.

The “#Toronto” tag indicates the subject matter of the tweet, which allows users to search tweets by the tag. Watching at home I saw #Toronto item slowly rise from position 8 to position 4, on the most popular search. Video’s and images began to be distributed furiously. 5 posts, 10 posts, 35 posts. Bang, bang, bang, as more reports of the disaster came in. Eventually I opened www.icerocket.com as I couldn’t update my twitter page fast enough! Images and videos began to be posted on www.twitpic.com, Tiny URL’s http://bit.ly/

I finally get it. This is what Twitter is about, capturing the pulse of the moment 1000′s of people connected to a common experience or event. It was like watching the CNN ticker but faster, with instant messaging to boot.

Still there are many limitations for Twitter as an emergency news service.

Notes about Twitters reports during the tornado emergency:

• Separating fact from fiction was major limitation of Twitter
• Repetition of information and questions and answers.
• No official presence on the national weather radio service, fire department, government.
• #Toronto was the tag to follow but at the beginning #Tornado was used how would a user know which channel to tune in? (A search eventually found the right channel)
• Twitter SPAM.

Micro blogging and Social Networks as a future emergency news service

Twitter or a gifted developer could create an app or system for emergency service that could highlight official information quickly, accurately, on Twitter.

With faster and more accurate information could possible save lives, or at least keep people from jamming up emergency phone lines, or let people know which areas are safe. The mechanics of this system would be daunting but GPS information of the tornado area, official updates, would be the next logical step, perhaps highlighted tweets to designate official government, police or emergency services.

The true test of a great idea is if someone takes you to court over it!

Apparently Twitter is being sued for a patent infringement, in the USA, August 5th.

I hope when they throw this lawsuit out, twitter can further develop this service.

Update: Aug 24th. Twitter is releasing an API with Geo-Targeting in case of a natural disaster, it looks like this will be happening sooner than later. http://cnt.to/hcj

Reference: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-twitter-to-add-location-data-a-precursor-to-geotargeted-ads-/