Now I am sure that everyone has heard at some point something similar to: “You must start blogging! It’s an incredible tool to spread the word!” and equally we are all constantly hearing things like “Twitter can project your voice instantly to huge audiences.”
Well I want to share a couple of examples that I’ve come across. Yesterday, we probably all heard about the amazing job done by a brave American Airlines pilot, dumping his plane into the Hudson river without any loss of life. What is different though, is a large number of you probably heard about it first through twitter. It turns out that one of the first ferry’s on the scene happened to have a man by the name of Janis Krums. Mr. Krums by luck had an iPhone on him and was in his twitter application so as the Ferry approached the plane to help the survivors he took a picture which went straight onto twitpic (the photo part of twitter) and the word was out…beating any professional reporter even though this is NEW YORK!
Now at least I can say that Mr. Krums didn’t take his micro-blogging quite as seriously as a certain Mike Wilson did in December. Mr. Wilson was actually in a plane crash and twittered updates throughout the entire ordeal leaving some to question the state of mind of a man that is trying to save his own life. The initial message of “Holy bleep bleep – I was just in a plane crash!” was followed with peaches like “Ugh … My glasses fell off in the mass exodus getting off the plane .. Can’t see very well” and “Continental keeping us locked up at the presidents club until they can sort everything out. Won’t even serve us drinks. :(” (Another link but be warned of no censoring!) Now this is obviously the other extreme side of the scale, but it is facinating as news agencies will give their right arms for eyewitness and survivor accounts. Well I would be scared if I were them, because now these eyewitnesses and survivors have their own voice without the need to use a news agency. Powerful stuff!
Lastly I want to share with you a little story that demonstrates the power of blogging. If I told you that I could create life with a blog you probably wouldn’t believe me. What if I told you, not only could I create life, but I could do it in the form of a prodigal 16-year old Moldovan football star that will be the next big signing for a team like Arsenal or Real Madrid. I kid you not…it’s happened. Now fortunately the scandal has been uncovered as a clever ruse – they still don’t know who was behind the scam or even the motivation – but through a series of blog postings, an update to Wikipedia and some other clever uses of imagination, certain news agencies were fooled into thinking Masal Bugduv was the next big thing, even going so far that the Times listed him number 30 in their list of fledgling superstars. Of course this has left a lot of red faces, and even yesterday (24 hours after it was discovered to be a scam), the cleanup operation had begun and poor old Masal is being wiped out – although an amusing apology can be found at the bottom of this page from goal.com. Well it just shows the power that each and everyone of us have to communicate to the world…so why not start using it?