It is the new trend, and a new rule. If you survive a plane crash, you just immediately pull our your mobile phone and send a tweet to your Twitter followers.

In December 2008, when a Continental Airlines craft taking off from Denver crashed after takeoff, Mike Wilson from Boulder, CO survived. And what did he do? Sent a tweet, of course! His Twitter handle is 2drinksbehind. His tweet was colorful (understandably):

Holy f****** sh** I wasbjust [sic] in a plane crash!

A bit later, Wilson tweeted that he lost his glasses in the crash. He was being held in the President’s Club. He then described the crash:

By the time the plane stopped we were burning pretty well and I think I could feel the heat even through the bulkhead and window," he wrote. "I made for the exit door as quickly as I could, fearing the right wing might explode from the fire. Once out, I scrambled down the wing.

Wilson made history that day.

A month later, history repeats itself. US Airways flight #1549 hits a flock of birds and experiences what the stewardess likes to call a “water landing” in the Hudson River off Manhattan Island. Janis Krums, who lives pretty close to me in Sarasota, FL, was first to post a photo. He yanked out his trusty Iphone, snapped a picture, and posted it to TwitPic and, hence, to Twitter.

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

Twitter = Real-Time Citizen Journalism

Krums ended up being interviewed by some of the major news networks very shortly after this photo was snapped. Put another way, the news networks were referring to citizens for the news.

The direction of news content is changing. No longer do we need to wait for news cameras to arrive before we know what’s happening. Today, with modern technology and sites like Twitter, we have access to collective eyes and ears on the Internet which are real-time. The news networks are now reactionary.

According to Scoble, shortly after the crash, Twitter was alive with 200 to 400 tweets per second with tweets containing the word “plane”. People were sharing Flickr photos (yes, photos of the crash were on Flickr within minutes, too). People were sharing other sources of news, much of it from citizens on the ground.

The world has changed, my friends.

And, yes, next time you survive a plane crash or see one, tweet it. You’ll probably gain a LOT of followers that day.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below: