One way I’ve tracked the impact of Hurricane Irene on the people in its path is via social media, and for this blogger, that primarily means Twitter.com, Tout.com, and YouTube.com.
As of this writing, there’s no Twitter top trend associated with Hurricane Irene, but according to Trendistic, the Twitter trend-recording platform, “power” is a surging keyword. “Power,” as in Twitter tweet reports of people without power, like this one:
JayVofTheElm: RT @CTLightandPower: 250,000+ customers now without power. Report your outage at 800-286-2000 or cl-p.com. OUTAGE MAP: http://t.co/il2rfOL
To put things in perspective, “power” has not broke the one-percent representation mark for Twitter topics, and needs to get into the six percent category to have a chance of being a real trend. “Irene” as a Twitter Topic, is five terms below “power,” and had its highest point at 11 PM EST on Saturday.
Tout and YouTube Give Visuals
I use Tout.com almost as religiously as I use Twitter, and am a featured user. Tout.com provides a great 15 second visual record of what’s happening with, in this case, Hurricane Irene. Here’s a Tout from Good Morning America, describing the New York City weather as “pretty intense:”
You can see the rest of the Tout.com #Irene posts with a click here.
And who can forget YouTube for video updates, like this one showing a flooded Milburn, NJ:
And this one from New York City, Manhattan, just posted five minutes ago:
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll