With uptake rates on the rise and journalists increasingly using Twitter to
tinyurl their stories, nab quick quotes from their followers, are the days of
the lowly PR numbered?
The thing that really got me into Twitter were the G20 riots in London; the
day when the Royal Bank of Scotland was raided. Journalists were tweeting live
updates, as they unfolded. The "by the grace of God" landing of US Airways
flight 154 on the Hudson River, back in January 2009, was another one.
That near miss, not only elevated the pilot, one Captain Chesley
"Sully" Sullenberger, to hero book status but also showed the
disconnect between new media and old.
Twitter’s trend page flagged up the key
terms #USAirways, #Hudsonplane and #crash, instantly. FlightStats.com, the
aviation information site, on the other hand, was showing the downed flight as
being late, but still en route to its destination. An hour after the accident,
Google’s trending service was showing no signs of those keywords, even an hour
after the accident.
