A Twitter emergency broadcast system in the works

June 23, 2008 | MG Siegler | Comments | |


We now interrupt this post to bring you a message from the Twitter emergency broadcast system.

Something along those lines may one day not be as silly as it sounds if James Buck gets his way. You may recall Buck as the former UC Berkeley student who was arrested in Egypt and used the micro-messaging service Twitter to get himself out of jail. Now he wants to start a Twitter-driven network for emergency situations such as the one he went through, according to The Industry Standard.

More specifically, the idea appears to be to create humanitarian groups out there watching specific regions. If a problem came up, such as a foreigner going to jail, or on a larger scale, an earthquake or another disaster, people could then message these “watchers” who could either mobilize to help out themselves, or pass the information along to someone who could.

Buck is even talking with Twitter itself about such a service. Twitter cofounder Biz Stone met with Buck last week to discuss how such functionality could work with regards to Twitter’s site.

Buck also notes that he hopes this new effort will help free his Egyptian translator who was placed in jail with him two months ago — and is still there.

We often write about Twitter’s downtime issues, but the fact remains that it is a very powerful communication tool when working properly. The Buck situation as well as the recent Chinese earthquake news is proof of this.

The service’s reliability has improved greatly since bringing in outside help from Pivotal Labs a couple weeks back.

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About the Author, MG Siegler

MG Siegler writes about technology trends and new media for VentureBeat, with a focus on mobile topics, social elements and key news stories. Before that, MG wrote about technology on his blog, ParisLemon. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan where he studied film. He's previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he did web development. He now lives in San Francisco.

  • I think that making Twitter an emergency broadcast system would be an excellent idea, once it's more robust and stable.
  • Yes, that is definitely the main key Mark. Unfortunately for this, as with many other newer apps/ideas, with no Twitter, no service.
  • Twitter911. Good idea. Another reason for everyone to use Twitter.