Most people (or is it just me...?) think of Twitter as way for people to let you know they're having a muffin at the airport, or that Facebook is for showing off your holiday photos from the Maldives (or Peebles, in my case!), but recently a couple of very serious events have shown the true power of Social Networking.
The first was the civil unrest currently taking place in Egypt. How were the vast crowds getting so organised? Twitter and other social networking apps seem to have played a major role. Even when the main internet feeds were cut imaginative ways were sought and achieved to keep the information flow going.
On an equally serious footing was the 21st Century thinking of the Queensland Police department in Australia. Faced with devastation and disruption due to the exceptional weather they put Facebook to good use, as I discovered reading this blog Five things we can already learn from Queensland Police use of social media by Ben Proctor. It captures the extent of the use that the Police were able to put their Facebook page to, as well as highlighting that many people automatically went looking on the internet for information, and found it! And with 600,000,000 registered users of Facebook (almost 10% of the worlds population!) it's a trend we'll see more of.
Maybe it's time you considered your organisations Facebook page in a new light.
What, you don't have one?! I'm sure you will after reading the above blog!!