Re: Social Networking for Emergencies

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