It has been much talked about, but I got to experience the real time news power of Twitter first- hand last Thursday when that plane went down in the Hudson River.
I was in the middle of sitting in on a briefing with my colleague Bennie, a client and Mobile Radio Tech, a publication that ironically covers mobile tech for first responders.
We are located in Times Square, near the West side of NYC (and not far from the Hudson River). The first inkling I had that something was wrong was when I realized that it was hard to hear the call because of the all sirens. Sirens are not an unusual occurrence in Manhattan, but these were pretty loud and persistent.
It was not Twitter that first alerted me to the mishap, but a colleague who passed by my office. I overheard him exclaiming that a plane had gone down in the Hudson River (and immediately flashed back to 911, that is how I first heard of planes going into the World Trade Center).
Suddenly, my Twitter seemed to come alive – some Tweets popped up via Twhirl, which seemed to relate to what was happening.
The first was from Peter Shankman, who lives on West side of Manhattan, his eloquent HOLY CRAP tweet was followed by comments from some other Twitterers that I follow. One Tweet carried the link for the real time MSNBC video feed, which I tuned into. I chimed in my 2 cents about the sirens via Twitter (see below for the actual details of the dialog).
Meanwhile, the briefing continued uninterrupted (we had it on mute so the sirens would not interfere).
This all unfolded in 40 minutes or less. As the call was winding down I saw the cliched – but surprising and much welcome news "and no one got hurt!" via Twitter, marking an end (for the time being) of a very intense briefing and event.
