Using Social Networking to Prepare for Hurricane Gustav

August 30, 2008 | Inspiration, Motivation & Leadership | Connie

I was doing some things in MyBlogLog.com and saw Wayne Sutton’s collaborative effort towards building community around those preparing for the hurricane. He is using Twitter but it’s being broadcast in his MyBlogLog stream which allows me to read it as a set. (I have 1500 people in Twitter & the noise level is high.)

There’s a ning for hurricane info – join & share information
On Twitter they’re using the hash tag #gustav
Live Twitter tracking by @jazzychad
And a ref librarian at Jefferson Parrish put up Yahoo pipes tracking tweets.
And Wayne is using his FriendFeed account to post all links.
*Update – Margaret Saizan is blogging updates at
- www.hurricane-katrina.org
- & has a community at http://beyondkatrina.ning.com/

People are commenting on Twitter that @RedCross is giving out more up-to-date info than the mainstream media. (My question is it really the Red Cross – after the Janet @Exxon deal. But we can worry about that after the hurricane!).

I hope that helps connect people in some small way. It’s great to see these tools utilized quickly to hopefully save lives.

I’m in Minnesota so quite a ways from the storm. I did see a request on Twitter asking for help & to email her at beyondkatrina@gmail.com

7 Responses to “Using Social Networking to Prepare for Hurricane Gustav”

jazzychad says:

August 30, 2008 at 4:38 pm

Hi Connie!

Thanks for the link to my Gustav Twitter tracking site. Actaully, you don’t have to use #gustav to be tracked there, it automatically collects any tweet with the word ‘gustav’ in it. You can filter the results for #gustav, but by default it shows all tweets. Thanks again!

-Chad
wayne sutton says:

August 30, 2008 at 5:19 pm

Hey thanks for the post, I hope everyone will be safe especially http://twitter.com/MarkMayhew
Robin Majumdar says:

August 30, 2008 at 9:38 pm

Thanks for the summary of the latest news WRT to the social networks doing serious communication in the face of Gustav… the challenge (as always) will be not only aggregating all the signals, but filtering the noise!

Cheers from safe in Montreal,
Robin
Twitter: @cbensen
Connie Bensen says:

August 30, 2008 at 9:42 pm

Thanks for your comments.
After I posted this I watched Andy Carvin organize the efforts on the ning. It was great to watch people coming together. Network Solutions has donated hosting for the wiki.

I’ll blog about it tomorrow.
flashtrader says:

August 31, 2008 at 8:17 am

Thank you for your information. I am currently in Asia blogging, and twittering about this story… thanks again.
christopher carfi says:

August 31, 2008 at 10:47 am

There’s a mobile-based guide to Gustav resources and information here: http://ventana.cerado.com/gustav08 , for those in the path of the storm without internet access.
sfranz says:

August 31, 2008 at 4:55 pm

New resource for Gustav help. Good luck everyone!