This is certainly something on the minds of many, especially after an event last week in Atlanta when a city councilmember tweeted a 911 request for a woman that was suffering from a seizure.

Is this how we might start “calling” in to 911?

Atlanta City Councilmember Kwanzaa Hall tweeted “Need a paramedic on corner of John Wesley Dobbs and Jackson st. Woman on the ground unconscious. Pls ReTweet” after having difficulty getting a phone call through to 911.

He also reportedly was concerned that his mobile phone would lose power before the call was answered.

Hall is said to be planning to register “@911Atl” on Twitter, although 911 operators will not monitor the tweets.

Latency Enters a New Dimension

Even before newspapers started closing because advertisers were abandoning print for online media, for decades, the medium had been struggling to keep up with disseminating information on a timely basis.

The Internet has taken the concept of info lag one step further…and the event in Atlanta is perhaps one of the most poignant examples.

When once it might have been difficult to think of a telephone as a slow or potentially obsolete method of communication, a few clicks on a mobile Twitter application has underlined social media’s radical influence in communications.

Hospitals, are You Listening?

In the context of marketing purposes, we’ve covered the concept of monitoring the Web, blogs, social media (including Twitter) to prevent and intercept emergencies—at least figurative emergencies that only damaged reputations and perhaps bottom lines.

But now, real life-and-death emergencies are being communicated on Twitter. Of course, it would have been a blessing if a hospital had heard the tweet and responded to the victim, but imagine the marketing coup it would have been, too!

Think about it.

Does your hospital have a Web 2.0 and social media strategy? AVID Design specializes in online healthcare marketing and is an ideal partner for building an efficient and effective social networking plan. Our free Web 2.0 assessment is a quick and easy way to get started.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 7:55 am and is filed under Brand Monitoring, Industry Trends, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.