Never underestimate the powere of your tools
An amazing moment in citizen journalism happened this afternoon after a US Airways plane goes down in New York City’s Hudson River. This iPhone photo is the first picture taken of the crash by Janis Krums (@jkrums) who, by the looks of it was on his way across the river on a commuter ferry that ended up helping the rescued passengers. By the amazing grace of some very well skilled pilots, nobody was killed in what they are calling the “Miracle on The Hudson”.
It looks to be immediately uploaded to TwitPic, a twitter photo application and is broadcast out via his mobile what looks to be 149 followers at the time. The estimated time this happens is no longer than 10 minutes after the plane had crashed.
It’s spreads viral throughout twitter and within minutes the micro-blogging’s photo service crashes. It looks like before that happens, friend Meg Fowler has it uploaded to flickr was trying to get it to @acarvin of the AP. From FaceBook:
In no time at all the photo hits several news sources including The LA Times and CNET. 20 minutes after, while the rescue is still happening, he is intreviewed by the local MSNBC affiliate on the air and shortly thereafter gets pinged on twitter by the New York Times.
Two hours after the Janis snaps this photo, it’s getting world wide news coverage.
and his follwers count flies through the roof
This occurrence is a great example of showing the strength and connectivity of us all spending time online. There is no question that social media is powerful and most would agree that we are just scratching the surface of what it can do for us. The simplicity of this whole event is just awesome.
At the time of this post, Janis’ latest tweet says he’s headed “back over to NY for a few interview”. It will be interesting to see how his citizen photo journalism story unfolds.
As an aside, to tie this in with why I’m posting this here. It’s because I hear something over and over again with regards to ‘getting it right’ or finding the right equipment when it comes to taking action with business. More proof positive that it’s not the tools, they are obviously powerful enough, it’s the user.
Update: from what I understand, the photo has been sold to the AP and the photographer, Janis Krums has now been interviewed by MSNBC, CNN, and Good Morning America. He’s pushing 3,000 followers some 24 hrs. later.
Update #2:
New York Times coverage, “Can a Tweet be a scoop?”
From the BBC, “Twitter’s iconic image of US Airways plane”
