Social Media Tracking California Wildfires
March 3rd, 2008 | by Brad King |During the wild fire outbreak in Southern California, I was at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, OH being lambasted by editorial newspaper writers who were convinced that their words spurred actions in communities — and without them, people would have no way of knowing what was happening.
I found this humorous because while they were rejecting my model for the editorial page (editorial -> social network/friend sharing -> meetup -> group blog), I was getting SMS and Twitter messages from friends in SoCal who were fleeing the fires.
In other words, I was getting all the real-time information I could from people on the ground all without the benefit of a gatekeeper helping me out.
I bring this up because I came across the Center Networks website that traced all the social media not used by traditional media. And while I read this, I realized that I didn’t watch one second of news — nor read much outside of CNN updates — while all of this happened, although I felt like I knew exactly what was happening because I was participating in the story.
