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This week’s 5.6 earthquake in Los Angeles created what’s known in our industry as a “mass calling event” — no, that’s not when your priest calls you to get to church — it’s when the volume of calls going through the telephone networks skyrockets very quickly, exceeding the capacity of the networks.
We design the networks to have enough capacity for the business Christmas, New Years, Superbowl, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, e.g. busiest calling days of the year, but enough to handle the kind of traffic we saw in the wake of the quake. But in an emergency, customers reach for the phone. For example, Sprint saw an 800% spike in call volume following the quake.
My instinct immediately after the quake was to use Twitter to alert the customers and reporters who follow me to important network information.
Here’s some of what I shared in real time:
- Colleague in LA just emailed saying she just felt an earthquake. She is in Encino. Anyone heard anything? 02:48 PM July 29, 2008
- OK, epicenter was 2 mi SW of Chino Hills, 5 mi SE of Diamond Bar, 7 mi south of Pomona, 29 miles ESE of LA Civic Center. 03:00 PM July 29, 2008
- For customers in LA, this when Nextel Direct Connect, which bypasses the local phone network, is incredibly helpful. 03:18 PM July 29, 2008
- Just heard that Sprint and Nextel networks are OK in LA, but local telco, AT&T is getting swamped, which would block all wireless carriers. 03:26 PM July 29, 2008
- Can’t use your cell phone in LA post-quake? Don’t assume your cell carrier is @ fault. Often landlines are out, which blocks wireless calls. 03:24 PM July 29, 2008
Well you get the idea. I just checked my twitter account — I posted 42 earthquake related tweets between the moment I heard about the quake and the end of the Mass Calling Event.
People noticed.
One of my “followers” on Twitter, Etan Horowitz, a tech writer for the Orlando Sentinel, blogged on my tips for his paper.
Several of our Los Angeles customers engaged me in Twitter conversations during the Mass Calling Event — they were hungry for information and I was quickly sharing it. One, Phyllis Zimbler Miller, shared my advice on her blog. We actually first connected on Twitter when her daughter, also a customer, was have some billing issues on her account.
That evening, Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, blogged about Twitter being the newswire of the future. Biz had a cool chart that caught my eye:
- Earthquake Tweets scoop AP & NBC
When I commented on Biz’s blog that evening, the other Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, posted a tweet announcing that Sprint was on Twitter.
Who saw that? His 7,661 followers.
A good chunk of them added me. And amusingly, the PR folks for AT&T and Verizon were quick to say, “We’re on Twitter, too.” (Incidentally, the Verizon and AT&T PR teams decided to follow me after Dorsey tweeted about me. Figures.)
Reporters and editors took notice Twitter’s role in sharing earthquake news. Chris O’Brien of the San Jose Mercury News wrote an excellent analysis for his blog over at MediaShift Idea Lab, a project funded by the Knight Foundation.
Mathew Ingram with the Toronto Globe and Mail has a blog post. As did the folks at the LA Times tech blog.
So did John Cox at Network World, Kevin Maney at Portfolio Magazine, Matthew Weaver at The Guardian, Dawn Kawamoto at CNET, MG Seigler at Venturebeat.com and Brandon Keim at Wired. He posted just minutes after the quake hit.
On Friday, I was interviewed by Emi Endo at Newsday for a story she is planning to write about Twitter’s role in the quake. Our discussion really broadened beyond that though. We ended up talking about how social media is changing the way reporters gather news and how business is done. Twitter is just the latest tool.
But it’s potential and ease of use has captivated me. What about you?
