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Twitter Spreads News Of U.S. Airways Crash In An Instant

Today was yet another indicator that Twitter is the way we're going to consume breaking news in the future. I learned about the US Airways Hudson River plane crash before it was on CNN.com, NYTimes.com, and FoxNews.com.

First there was an earthquake over the summer. Then the downed jet fighter in San Diego. Today, Twitter was the source I first saw reporting the US Airways flight that crash-landed into the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey.

Twitter represents the power of people to communicate events in an instant. Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer was the first I saw to report news of the crash. I quickly checked all the major news sites and saw no coverage. Since I live in the NYC metro area, I ran into my living room and turned on the TV. News channel WNBC 4 in NYC was just interrupting local programming to report news of the crash.

Within minutes there were hundreds of Tweets about the crash, complete with pictures from eyewitnesses and even one person who was on a NYC ferry headed to the crash site to pick up passengers.

That's amazing power, all thanks to the mobile phone and a social networking tool called Twitter. News spreads like wildfire when you can tell 100, 500, 1,000 people at once with a single Tweet.

Results are showing up here, here, and here, faster than Twitter can keep up.

Expect to see more news breaking via Twitter rather than traditional media outlets.

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