10-1 Twitter and Haiti

Tweak the Tweets a Great Idea for Crises


Kate Starbird, a University of Colorado graduate student, has come up with an idea that manipulates one of the most popular networking sites into a site that can potentially help people in crisis. Her idea of “Tweak the Tweet” is essentially turning a Twitter post into a cry for help, or a request for aid in any way during a disaster, such as Haiti. Tweets that have a certain syntax and format send certain messages to the computer, and allow people to notify others that they are in need. The program is working and Haiti is an example of this.

The change in the syntax of the “tweets” uses the # symbol along with key words in order to distinguish. There is a site here, showing examples of how the syntax is different from a normal “tweet.”

The earthquake in Haiti was one of the most devastating natural disasters that we have seen in a long time. The earthquake affected millions of families, whether that was by destroying homes, ruining other buildings, or displacing a loved one away from the rest of his or her family. After the earthquake, there was a scramble to find even the basic necessities needed to live or to find everyone that had been displaced or killed during the disaster. And how were we supposed to know where to help specifically. Granted, I realize that Twitter can only do so much in terms of helping, but I think it is an encouraging sign that we have the ability to change something so well known just for social networking, into an agent that can help save lives.

I think this is an encouraging time in an age where we are kind of getting sucked into the world of technology. Technology can be helpful, but also very scary at the same time. Certainly a case can be made that with more technological advances comes more crime and more opportunities for people to make the wrong choice. However, I think that the “Tweak the Tweet” idea and its application to the crisis is an encouraging sign that it is in fact a good thing that technology, especially networking tools such as Twitter, are making the world smaller for a good purpose.

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/02/haiti-quake-propels-twitter-community-mapping-efforts.html

http://epic.cs.colorado.edu/more_before_and_after_examp.html