Chesley B. Sullenberger III, flight 1549 and social media
By Sam Chimes
The amazing story of US Airways flight 1549 proliferated news waves like such a story should. And, as it developed, it quickly became evident that social media was bursting with details and reaction – it was life streaming.
Lifestream Blog discusses watching the event unfold, seemingly prompted by the thoughts of Robert Scoble, who retrospectively wishes that he’d opened a Friendfeed room to track the drama. The LS Blog post links to some great resources around how people sent, gathered and aggregated snippets of information as they arose. Notable is the use of Storytlr by journalist Kevin Sablan.
Streams of online information created around events isn’t a new concept, yet when something like this arises, you can’t help but feel excited by the possibilities. It is inevitable that reporting in such a manner will become more prevalent, as LS Blog says,
“I think we are going to see this become pretty commonplace this year as the value for creating one is huge.”
You only need to look at the numerous posts similar to these examples on RWW and Gigaom, directing internet eyes to where the inauguration of Barack Obama will be visible online. It’s the way things are going.
So the only thing left to do is explain why I included the Chesley B. Sullenberger III name check in the title. Well, even a hero-pilot has got to have a Facebook page, and Chesley is no exception – except that he has over 358,000 fans.
