The Power of Social Media Comes Full Circle in Montana

This is a re-post of an article written by James Ridle that was published to his Facebook profile today. It's republished here in its entirety.

Today was a perfect example as to how Twitter, other social media and the general power of the internet can directly effect news and pertinent information in a time of crisis.

And the players were:

Twitter (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23bozexplod): continuous tweets about the accident and those around it were available via twitter moments after the explosion. The #bozexplod hashtag was in the top 10 hashtags of the day since the explosion occurred. People were able to share real-time information, advice, frustration, stories, pictures and blog posts in 140 characters or less. The search page relating to the explosion was updated in real time. The media in Bozeman has mentioned Twitter a few times already. Michael Becker wrote up more on the power of Twitter during today's events here:

http://www.hypercrit.net/2009/03/05/twitter-did-its-job-for-bozeman-today/

Streaming radio (http://www.kmmsam.com) was used to broadcast the news conferences live, over the internet.

Flickr: (http://flickr.com/photos/crd/) & Twitpic: People took pictures and posted them, with a few newspapers asking to use the photos in their stories.

Bozeman Daily Chronicle (http://twitter.com/bozchron, http://bozemandailychronicle.com) posted news of the explosion minutes after it happened.

And we even have fancy Google maps giving everyone a bird's eye view of where everything happened:

Google Map http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=45.67989,-111.033443&spn=0.004827,0.009238&t=h&z=17&msid=111490243384956875499.000464662ce5975ca6b0f

There are various blog entries from people in Bozeman:

http://manifestbozeman.com/blog/2009/03/05/bozeman-montana-explosion-rocks-downtown/

http://tranquilityjones.blogspot.com/2009/03/quick-update.html

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-225174

This is a perfect example of citizens and businesses in action, using social media and technology in time of emergency. Here's to hoping that state and local agencies will begin to use the power of social media in the future.

Related posts:

1. Social media as journalism in a small city
2. Dabblers go home; journalists need to be social media leaders
3. Web content generated from the Bozeman explosion today
4. #bozeplod, six months on
5. Twitter did it’s job for Bozeman today