Thanks for your concern, everyone. All's well with the Internet Evolution staff (including Nicole). Two of us aren't even based in New York, so we're fine.
Mitch unreliable in the sense it was just overwhelming and confusing and difficult to sort out the bullsh-t from facts at one point. During an emergency this is a real issue. If twitter was the only option I had during something like this I would definitely being paying attention to police or emergency feeds only. Some New York media outlets did a good job under extraordinary circumstance. I ended up with New York Daily News which I never read but they had a real-time feed that was pretty accurate and twit pics coming in were pretty scary looking even after their lights went out and water was lapping at their building's door. Huffington was completely down (503) and out at that point and managed to get a splash page up which barely managed to work. The New York Times site was having trouble keeping up with accurate info and presenting it in an easy and fast way to get to but when everything is hitting the fan and your windows are rattling and your buildings swaying and the streets below are flooding and the power is out I too would be worrying more about survival than fact gathering and keeping the front page tidy. At that point I just basically thought oh boy this isn't good at all.
Yes, I saw the fake pictures. Very silly. And there was even a troll who posted false but scary tweets. He was promptly outed, and I'm not feeling too much sympathy. I could even imagine that he might face prosecution.
How about the couple of pictures that were RT'ed and shared that where fake? Scenes from "The day after tomorrow" , "Independence Day" made it to twitter and facebook, and manyyy people fell for them.
The Dream Chaser - You raise a very interesting point: Is social media a good source of information during an emergency?
My experience was completely the opposite of yours -- I found Twitter in particular to be the best source of breaking news. I have since at least autumn 2011 (when we had dangerous brushfires here in San Diego). I relied on it during the Osama Bin Laden killing as well.
The key is to evaluate the trustworthiness of sources on Twitter. I follow news sites on Twitter, as well as individual journalists. There are also a few people, such as @anildash (former journalst, now Internet entrepreneur) who are good sources of news.
Another key is to look to official sources and legitimate news media for confirmation.
TV has become useless for breaking news. I turned it on for Sandy news yesterday morning, and all I could find was Law & Order reruns and idiots talking at length while saying nothing about the Presidential election.
Having watched this from the midwest while you were hunkered down and without power all I can offer is positive thoughts for a quick recovery and return to normal. The east coast took heavy damage all the way down the coast. Internet coverage from there got pretty chaotic and unreliable when the storm made landfall which it totally understandable. Social media was unreliable for getting any accurate info because to many idiots and morons started abusing it while people with legit needs were trying to get help. I also watched major websites go down when the storm surge starting flooding the city it was weird. I still think a lot of people in New York may not be totally aware of just how extensive the damage is with power still out. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Makes me sad to see so much damage there. I grew up in Jersey 20 minutes from Manhattan.
mtechie, - It is shocking the pictures i've seen on twitter and facebook since Monday. I didn't even know that New York was a hurricane prone area to the point of cars getting submerged in water....I pray for an end to that horror. There's a pic i just saw where a tree fell and crashed down a house wall and you could see everything inside in shambles..
I would have loved to post a few images to Twitter yesterday, but I had no cell service and this is the first time I've been plugged back into "the matrix" in three days :)
I'm sure we'll see patterns of more pictures come in over the next few days as power starts to return to certain areas slowly.
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