This reminds me of Katrina, and people running around on Twitter raving about it's communication success -- except, that it wasn't. I vaguely remember some cats talking about HAM radio as still be effective to some degree. I guess you can't knock the instantaneous hustle of Twitter, though. Hubris indeed. - DYKC?™ from Alert Thingy

I'm investigating if myspace users reported on this as well, but my main concern, as I posted on mathew ingram's blog, is that this may be based on ENGLISH speaking users of Twitter et al. Unless everyone suddenly became fluent in Chinese. This is a futile effort, because what difference does it make, really? No one wants details, they want headlines. - Eric Rice

During Katrina SMS was the the only communications that worked. Ask "Ernie the Attorney" -- he was stuck in New Orleans and could only talk with outside world via SMS. - Robert Scoble

Between emergency personnel or civilians? SMS relies on an infrastructure that someone controls, not a decentralized one like the ham radio bands. Any insights into trunked systems, APRS, etc? - Eric Rice

pretty certain that twitter users inherit that human tendency to overinflate their importance in the general scheme of existence. - Nathan Eckenrode

I just left a comment over on this post, but it's held in moderation. Eric: I was talking about citizen communication. I've never had access to ham radio equipment. Maybe you do, but most citizens don't so discussing such is off topic. - Robert Scoble

Some things: 1. IM is fast, but not scalable. The entire world can search Twitter using Summize and Tweetscan to find messages that mention “quake” and “earthquake.” We can NOT do that to find your wife’s messages. That’s why I heard about the quake first on Twitter, not on IM or email or some other site. - Robert Scoble

. 2. Those who focus on Twitter being faster than USGS are missing the point. The point is that no one would have known to look at USGS if it weren’t for people telling us that something major had happened. In the old days that was mainstream news. How long would you have had to wait if you were in New York to learn about the quake and weren’t on Twitter? Well, the New York Times newspaper didn’t have news for 36 hours. Most TV? One to five hours, and even then you’ll only get a few minutes of coverage. - Robert Scoble

The real point? That we are now able to compare notes with more than a million people around the world IN REAL TIME in a way that’s searchable and reusable and relinkable. That has NEVER been possible before. If you were watching my Twitter account you didn’t see me doing any Twitter “boosterism.” Instead, I just linked my readers to people who were on the scene and were reporting to us all what they were experiencing. That was magical. - Robert Scoble

Hold the phone, the first thing I read was from YOU about being 3 minutes faster than USGS. Ummm, what? And that's what everyone latched onto. I know that we're all not journalists here, but perhaps that's getting thrust upon us whether we like it or not. Get to that point of 20K, guess what? You're a journalist, and you don't have a say in that AT ALL. So the blame can't be put on those focusing on that. - Eric Rice

I put out a call for some first responders to jump in, because it's dangerous to have something hyped to the extreme of being dangerous. These are not mission critical apps, these are not even reliable apps with SLAs, and the spin being formed is how much they are saviours of the free world. Just like the story with the Egypt guy. His US Passport carries weight but oh man TWITTER DID IT. That's dangerous. That's NY Times-grade. That's what we're becoming. - Eric Rice

This reminds me dangerously of those three Silicon Valley nerds who, in their "citizen media" bliss, drove all the way down to NOLA to bring cameras to the people, because that's important, apparently, leaving six autonomous coolers, small fridges to store medicine that has a cooling chain, behind in Houston, TX. It's this Silicon Valley zeal to assume that toys and (now) Twitter are more important than food, clean water, security details for first responder storage units, medicine, and other things. - Jonas M Luster

I found Twitter invaluable during the Southern California fires of October 2007 - not for getting news *out* (thank goodness, I had no news to report), but for getting news in to me - finding out how close the fires and evacuation areas were to my home. - Mitch Wagner

'hubris' and 'self-congratulatory' -- both seem like apt descriptions of the Twitterati coverage. I can see how Twitter was useful in this earthquake's coverage, and I think it has its place, but... it was strange. It seemed like the folks you mentioned were 50% passing information, 50% adding the event coverage to their portfolios. But, hey, like pure altruism exists anywhere... - Kirk Kittell

HAM radio works when everything else fails, you can run it off solar or gasoline. Silicon Valley has some excellent graybeard HAM radio operators. Youngsters should learn from their example. - Jason Wehmhoener

@Scoble - sorry about this - but you are incorrect about Katrina and SMS being the "only communications that worked." http://interdictor.livejournal.com/2005... - an awful lot of us were tuned to Interdictor's livejournal detailing exactly what was happening the whole time - and their efforts to keep directnic up and internet access available. - Lucretia Pruitt

I'm not sure if going back to HAM is the answer. It's a bit retro, even for the MAKE generation. However, maybe there should be a discussion of how to use public communication resources like Twitter to leverage other low-tech distributed communication mediums (since we're already talking about how we can use network effects to quickly respond to emergencies). What I really want to know: was there an SMS earthquake warning in China like we have in the states? - Steve Lynch from Alert Thingy

@jason many of my good friends (my age) are hams, and they are deeply involved in Burning Man's communication network. Some work for companies we all rely on, but out of courtesy, I keep that quiet. It's a decentralized infrastructure, the ham thing. We did a show on this 2 years ago when Katrina hit because the wifi pompom brigade was getting a bit out of hand. Radio communications are not out-dated. Google wouldn't be bidding on wireless spectrums otherwise, heh. - Eric Rice

HAM is not "a bit retro", it's completely and utterly reliable, without fail. - Jason Wehmhoener

@Steve it's also not about 'going back to ham' (not that there's any 'going back to' involved-- instead, it's about understanding the widest breadth of technologies and what's mission critical, what's not, what's hype, and so on. This came up a bit when 365 Main data center went offline. That was just a mere power failure that rocked the generators. That WASNT an earthquake with bodies on the ground. 365 Main neutered a lot of sites then, and the possibility remains for the future to neuter our so-called + - Eric Rice

@eric, thanks for that. good point about google too, but the key thing to remember about HAM vs. other radio networks is the very thing you point out: HAM is completely decentralized, and it's not limited to narrow sections of bandwidth like WIFI is, so you can go really low wavelength and blast through walls and other obstructions. Try to do that with a linksys! - Jason Wehmhoener

... "new saviours" ... I'm crying out for a little balance, here, is all. - Eric Rice

Ok, I'm overly verbose for a comment here :) My comment is over on my blog: http://blog.goldiesgabs.com/2008... - Goldie Katsu

Thanks Goldie, very well said! - Jason Wehmhoener

BTW, this is kinda like the user-generated version of how the mainstream media might find a story about a kid doing something bad and it's BREAKING TOP STORY NEWS AT 11 THIS JUST IN. The biggest advocates for the bloggish thing appear to evolving into what was hated about the ancestors. That's natural, I suppose. The goal is to be wiser and have some moments of clarity. Question authority and all that. Anyway, I'm exhausted. Y'all can continue to debate. We the media, indeed. - Eric Rice

OK, so maybe hubris or ego or whatever enters into my tweets and posts (I can't speak for anyone else, so I'll speak for myself). However, perhaps that hubris/ego can be used. If I end up patting myself on the back for sharing a story with a wider audience...well, I shared the story with a wider audience, so some good came out of it. - Ontario Emperor

One more comment about amateur radio is on Goldie's comment. http://blog.goldiesgabs.com/2008... - Shamir Katsu