Update: The Images in this post have gone all wonky due to a WordPress update. I’m working on fixing it. Sorry! 
This afternoon, a US Airways plane made an emergency landing in the Hudson River after both engines were knocked out by an unfortunate encounter with some Canadian Geese. Luckily everyone was ok. As I followed this story online, I realized just how much technology and social media has changed the way I interact with news. Today an army of bloggers and citizen journalists can compete against almost any news organization.
Tracking Breaking News through Conversation
I first heard rumblings about this incident from twitter and soon the entire Twitterverse was in full force, piecing together what had happened. Even though there was little confirmed at the time, the speed at which people could update twitter meant a “news cycle” that lasted only a few seconds before new information was added. Additionally, because people are also constantly on twitter, mistakes can be corrected quickly, compared with watching a traditional newscast where you would only tune in once.
Keywords such as Hudson, Flight1549 and US Airways quickly became trending tags on Twitter Search, usually an early alarm for letting me know that something is up:
I follow BreakingNewsOn who quickly reported the unfolding events:
Every few tweets BreakingNewsOn would post an update, summarizing the situation, and letting me know the most recent version of events.
Reports from People on the Ground
Twitter user JKrums sent this tweet only minutes before boarding a ferry that would soon be diverted to pick up stranded passengers from the Hudson River.
He posted the first image on Twitter via his iPhone, a photo that was quickly picked up by all sorts of media outlets. It has already been seen via Twitpic over 29,000 times! This was largely in part to “re-tweeting” or forwarding twitter messages to their own network of friends. This created a viral news effect, essentially turning each twitterer into a content distribution platform.
A Little Touch of Humor:
Once it was established that no one was hurt and the culprits were some Candian Geese, the mood shifted and the jokes started pouring in, including my favorite conversation, the “War on Birds”:
Even though it has only been a few short hours, there is already an entry on Wikipedia. The page does a good job at consolidating some of the media coverage and pulling together a comprehensive overview of the event including the fact that the water landing was one of the most “technically challenging and seldom attempted feats in commercial aviation.”
Watched it unfold via twitter on my iPhone on the way home from class in Peterborough back to the GTA. When I got home I still knew more about it then what TV news was then reporting. You sure said it at the end of that first paragraph.
That Wikipedia entry already has 27 notes. That’s impressive!
This is surely interesting to see and Twitter continues to be success:
http://commetrics.com/?cat=427
While in the US Airways emergency landing it worked, in other cases I am not sure. For instance, will Twitter work for the World Economic Forum in Davos
http://Twitter.com/WEFdavos
In other crisis situations Twitter news seem to fail miserably as this example shows:
http://bit.ly/t9jd
Nevertheless, its an amazing tool for sure and have a great trip to Davos.