In case you don’t know, there is a gasoline shortage in the south and the Atlanta area in particular. The New York Times says, “The problem began when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike battered Gulf Coast refineries, reducing the national refinery capacity by as much as 20 percent. It worsened as nervous drivers stockpiled gasoline”.
Where can you find gas? How can you find gas if you can’t drive around to find it? As Clay Shirky would say, “HERE COMES EVERYBODY”! Twitter to the rescue! By inserting hash tags into tweets, people are able cover one topic completely, or at least better than traditional media. When people started communicating their need for gas in Atlanta an #atlgas hash tag was born.
Little background on how the hash tag works. Hash tags are like flags, when you twitter a message relevant to a topic, you’re able to flag it, like this:
Tweet: QT on windy hill @Cobb Pkwy #atlgas has unleaded only —-7 minutes ago—-
What this will do, is feed the Twitter system with your tweet, but associate it to the topic ‘atlgas’. When a number of tweeple start tweeting about a specific topic, it becomes clear that following that topic could get interesting or useful. At this point, what you need to do, is visithttp://search.twitter.com and search for the hash tag that everyone is using. This will then only display tweets relevant to that topic!
It’s funny, if you read through the tweets you see at one point CNN (based in Atlanta) comes in and starts asking questions. The Atlanta Journal Constitution picked up the twitter feed but buries the tiny link in the sidebar of a tabbed widget, how is that helping people? The local media outlets should have created the hash tag and promoted it’s use and utility on their site. The Twitter API is free and open to developers, why not have your in-house people get a feed up and running on your front page till the crisis is over? Don’t you think people will find it useful, maybe find your news site useful?
So there is this massive problem in the south and traditional media sources have failed to help people. In comes a new technology, Twitter, helps people, and reinforces the notion that newspapers and probably newspaper sites are irrelevant. The bigger kick in the balls will be when, in a few days or weeks, the crisis is over and there is an article in the paper about how people got through it all. But it does not have to be this way. Newspapers should embrace the technology and use to help their readers. When an event happens have your editors CREATE hash tags to help your readers resolve their problem. Post the tag and how it’s used on your front page and track the usage to ensure you are using it well.
UPDATE:
Blogger and Twitter user Tessa is credited with creating the #atlgas hash tag. Visit her blog to see screenshots.
This post is mentioned in Scientific American
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Who started the atlgas tag? It’s a brilliant solution.