the power of people publishing

I sometimes hesitate to bang on about how revolutionary Twitter is as a communications platform. It’s almost becoming a cliche, and lauding 140 characters of plain text can come across as an overclaim.

But when you see how the medium excels with breaking news stories like this (and thankfully, early reports are that everyone got off the plane safely), the potency of immediate sharing by anyone with a mobile – including pictures – becomes clear.

In the 7 minutes it’s taken me to write this post, over 2,100 people have posted tweets incorporating the word plane.