Using Social Media as an Emergency Notification System June 25, 2010
Can Twitter Be Your Emergency Notification System?
In this age of instant notification, social networking, and rapid-fire technology, Disaster Recovery Journal brings up an interesting thought. Can a social media outlet like Twitter serve an organization as their primary emergency notification system?
The answer may be … well, maybe.
Let’s look at the Pros:
- Social media sites are very popular - Twitter attracts up to 25 million unique visitors every day
- Social media expands information delivery
- It’s free
- Tweets are instantaneous and broadcast information in real time
And now the Cons:
- Social media sites are susceptible to attacks and security threats
- Despite the popularity and traffic on Twitter, more than 60% dump the service after the first month of use
- During the Haiti earthquake crisis, an overload of tweets took the site down for 90 minutes
- Posted information is not verified
Considering the possibility of security issues and downtime, the concept of using a popular social media site such as Twitter as your only notification track is likely not a wise move. It’s true that it’s free, fast, and easy to use. There is no doubt that Twitter supports an extremely high level of real-time information exchange.
However, relying entirely on social media for emergency notification is likely a dangerous proposition. Twitter or a similar social media site may provide a nice supplementary notification system, but it would not be wise to utilize it as your only notification system.
