Airliner Near-Disasters: When Twitter Gets Interesting

I’m not sure why, but I’ve never had any interest in Twitter. The idea behind this is that you send “tweets” or what is effectively microblogging short bursts of info in real time. I’ve had some friends think this means we really want to know exactly what their washing in the laundry on a Sunday afternoon or what they’re looking at one the web. I couldn’t care less.

But every so often, there comes along an interesting use for Twitter. I’ve seen it used well to “live blog” announcements or conferences, and that can be an effective way to pass along breaking news to be elaborated upon in a full blog post later. But I never thought I’d be so fascinated as I was last Saturday when a passenger on the Continental 737 that went off the runway in Denver started sending tweets once he was safely off the plane.

For example . . . “whoever was on the left side exit row, god bless him, was johnny on the spot and instantly had the door open - people crowded out in a mass” about 21 hours ago from web. Talk about an interesting read. You can see his followups here.