Seth Godin had a good post this morning about New York City's poor communication after yesterday morning's storm. His summary: "[in an emergency situation,]
the first thing to rehearse is your communication strategy".
Earlier this year, I made a forecast that Twitter would mushroom as its commercial uses were adopted (
see item #7).
Several companies have began to use it. But it may prevail that the most useful uses for Twitter (and
RSS feeds in general) will come from municipal groups (some quasi-) alerting citizens of
fires,
earthquakes,
SF weather,
Atlantic hurricanes, etc. Digging around, I found that there
is a
Bay Area Traffic Jam feed (though my bridge isn't covered) and a
BART problem feed. Both are useful...but who knows about them?
The biggest problem isn't creating those feeds, it
is educating consumers how to use them. My girlfriend's 15 year-old brother doesn't know
what RSS or Twitter
is. My mother doesn't know about them; nor does my brother or his kids. I would expect that 90% of America has no clue about them. So...the question...how do we educate people about using feeds?
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