Social Networking for Emergencies

here is an interesting article about a new social networking tool called Microsoft Vine
http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-04/social-networking-emergencies

If this becomes popular enough it (network externality) it could become pretty useful in involving people like you and me and harnassing the power of social networks to spread information regarding weather conditions in real time, or perhaps swine flu.

hmmmm. in a way, I almost feel like something like this wouldn't work out for two reasons: 1. both parties would need to have access to a computer and if there was a disaster I'm not sure that would be readily avaliable and 2. It kind of seems obselete in a sense that why would you want to spend time updating your Vine account when you could just call/text/email your loved ones with your whereabouts?

It basically sounds like another Facebook/twitter type of social network. I understand the intent...I just don't see the practicality or how they plan to become really popular. Am I missing the point or something?

"Emergency response entails a widespread tactical effort by countless government agencies. Too often, citizens are left out of the loop and have to rely on mass media, cell phones, and Web sites for emergency information. Microsoft Vine is a new social networking tool, designed to help its users keep tabs on people and places."

I don't see how Microsoft Vine would be any different from "Web sites for emergency information". There is nothing that appears to be state of the art or something that Google Alerts couldn't already do for you. In times of emergency, I would rely on government emergency systems instead of a system updated by a corporation, but who knows, Microsoft might come up with something ingenious that everyone would depend on during times of emergency.

as for Lauren's first concern, I'd say that this technology will also come into its own when smartphones that can run this software become more common. i think it won't take more than another year or two for that time to come

as for the feeling that this is just another social networking tool, well it is. but it is a more specialized one. unlike twitter, it aggregates data from, say, the NOAA and other places. i'm assuming it also has an interface that streamlines the process.
in addition, the articel says that "People have already used Twitter to alert family and friends about emergencies" but "Twitter's iffy reliability makes it less than ideal for critical emergency communications"

the problem with only relying on government agency systems is that technology can't accurately predict the weather nor, more importantly, does it give detailed information in real time. sure the system is run by Microsoft, but the information come from real people and it's not like the "evil corporation" has an incentive to plant misinformation on its network to prevent people from responding to natural disasters

I'd say that the only reason twitter's iffy reliability makes it not as useful for these sorts of emergencies is because twitter a) still counts as a startup that can't keep up with the massive growth it's being going through recently, and b) isn't designed specifically for that purpose. Twitter is designed as a social networking tool. Why else have there been so many competitors springing up? Twitter isn't going into those areas. So Microsoft Vine wants to step in and augment the emergency sector. Companies like Yammer create microblogging networks for companies, accessible only by employees and other authorized users, giving people an easy way to do realtime updates on more sensitive things like product development.

I see microsoft vine becoming a good system, just by the fact that it's microsoft. The tools they create, though they may not be the best, are often the most used. IE is still the most used browser, because it still does come standard on many computers. Microsoft vine can be easily bundled in with windows, windows mobile, xbox live, zune software, etc. It works because microsoft's reach is so broad that it can still connect across multiple platforms. Granted, microsoft does need some work on the actual implementation, but all the infrastructure is there. But, like all new technologies, people need to actually pick up on it and decide to use it. As of now, vine is an opt in beta program. People like us who learn about these things and are interested may look into trying the product, but someone who's not really big on computers may not find this as useful. We'll see how it goes.

Anyways, isn't the joke that whenever something exciting happens, the first thing you need to do is to write a blog post about it?

I'm just wondering if in an actual national emergency, would vine be able to support the massive onslaught of traffic being sent through. During Obama's presidential inauguration, the cell phone companies were wondering whether they would be able to support tons of people making phone calls, sending texts, and uploading images all at once. For the most part they were, with some callers saying that there was a slight delay to put through a phone call. Now imagine some kind of emergency where people would start basically "tweeting" everyone about what is going on. No longer is there one person calling family or friends saying, get out, but its one person contacting a bunch at once. Now imagine a bunch of people contacting an ever larger group of people all at once, I see some flaws in that design.

Social networks can be very useful to update a large group of people rather quickly, but sometimes such a thing like a radio broadcast is more efficient, being able to spread to the masses, instead of relying on the person-to-person relay that is needed by social networks.