The picture that changed everything

http://twitpic.com/135xa - "There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy."

This was the message that for me changed communications. Instantly.

In Twitter style I’ll start with a question: don’t you think doesn't the worldwide coverage given to the New York plane emergency proves that Twitter is the most important global social network?

I do and how Twitter broke the story above is the reason.

Right now Twitter is the social network the others would like to be. Whenever news breaks, as in Mumbai and then the big one – the plane crash this week which is already being called the Miracle on the Hudson, it is Twitter that breaks the story. When dozens of New York-based Twitter users started sending 'tweets' about a possible plane crash in the city, the story assumed a speed of its own.

For me what has transformed Twitter as a social sit is the emergence of Twitpic which has seen it emerged as a real platform for all those citizen journalists out there. Like Twitterer  Janis Krums, who was on one of the ferries sent to pick up the passengers from the plane in the River Hudson. He took a picture on his iPhone and posted it on Twitpic. The online interest in the picture was so extreme that the servers used by the Twitter application initially crashed under the weight of traffic.

Does anyone have a personal connection to Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter? AMEC  would love to have him as our Special Speaker at an International Summit in Berlin in June talking to European communications specialists about the Twitter success story and new applications.

Comments

[Barry Hurd]

The speed of communications using services like Twitter is going to be the "tipping point" of how media touches users.

Right now Twitter is still on the small side, but given its meteoric growth from 400 users just last year: I am sure we will see it (or another platform) truly take "the miracle on the Hudson" and saturate 1 out of 2 people around the world... in minutes.

One of my own recent articles on PR Killing Itself shot around Twitter very quickly (faster than ever before) with 1000's of PR pros reading it in days. The effect was through 5 to 10 influential readers on my own Twitter account who made it saturate an industry.

As existing communication hubs begin merging networks together, I think there will be some substantial growth changes in the upcoming twelve months.

Great observations and commentary, I'll be stopping by here more often.

~Barry