How Twitter Found A Missing Person Post-Chile Quake
Here is one powerful function of social media technology that is seldom reported on. Twitter is much, much more than a social yadayada tool. Few of us, let’s be honest, would think to turn to Twitter to find lost and missing people in a disaster zone. I’d be thinking that the network’s down so the internet and cellphone would be down. This moving story from Sherly Breuker and Ken Camp was first reported in Mashable, a leading social media guide online. Whoever thought that using the technology of twitter could be such an emotional experience:
Imagine awakening only to learn there’d been a major earthquake in Chile, where you have family. We did.
Many of our friends know Sheryl’s brother Brian and his wife Mariali. We’ve all been friends for quite some time (Jaiku, Facebook, Twitter), but now we’re also family. She lives just outside Santiago, not far from where the big earthquake hit this morning.
We immediately tried calling, texting, online, but no contact. Power, water, and phones are out there. In many areas the devastation is severe. We simply didn’t have any idea. We reached to social media. Everywhere.
People responded, mostly by retweeting. The power of the retweet is something we take for granted. A man we didn’t know in any way sent a simple tweet that he was in Chile and
asked how he could help. We scrambled to give him every bit of useful information that we could come up with.He messaged several times that phones were out and he couldn’t get through. Then, amazingly he said “as soon as I get a chance I will go to the address you gave me.”
