#ashtag – Twitter at its best?

Well what a week its been in Europe, and especially here in the UK. The explosion of volcano Eyjafjallajokull has led to a totally unprecedented complete closure of our airspace, with flight cancellations running into the high tens of thousands and travel disruption like never seen before that will take many weeks to finally settle back to normal. The mainstream media have, of course, been all over the story, scrabbling round for any nuggets of information they can find, and to be fair they’ve managed a pretty decent coverage. But for anyone with more than just a passing interest in the news, or – more importantly – for anyone directly caught up in the chaos, its has been Twitter that has been the real star of the information show.

Within minutes of Thursday 15th April’s breakfast-time airspace shut-down, the first place that many were turning to – myself included – to try to find out what was going on was Twitter. At that stage a few of the specialist aviation Twitter IDs were starting to report on things, but with limited information initially available, there wasnt a lot to go on. Next up the official airline feeds started up with their own news, but again, early information was pretty sketchy (and from a customer service perspective, throughout the period, but especially at first, some of the airlines confused not having much news to tell with not saying much, and in some cases got a beating from their customers for it).

However, it was a matter of minutes before the savvy Twitter user was turning from the official airline and enthusiast Twitter accounts to more specialist sources. And its here were things start to get interesting, and quickly.

Take @eurocontrol, the Twitter account of the body that oversees airspace in Europe – hardly a mainstream source of information for the casual Twitter user, but it didn’t take long for the very switched-on folks there to turn their Twitter account into a rolling-news service par excellence. As time progressed, this and other official sources started to gradually publish more and more info on the situation – rapid, concise information bursts, honest, and transparent. This I find fascinating – most big companies (and I presume all of the affected organisations from airlines to airports and air traffic control) will have carefully planned PR strategies that are very measured in what they say, but this situation seemed to herald (for some at least) a marked shift towards being as upfront as possible, as quick as possible, and tailoring their content towards their ultimate end customer rather than necessarily their usual specialist industry audience. I wrote about speed and transparency of message from brands a few months ago on this blog, and this situation seemingly forced the hands of many companies to move from tradition ‘say nothing’ to ultra-progressive ‘say everything we know, and often!’

As is the way with Twitter, it didn’t take long for a hashtag to emerge – #ashtag being the emergent victor. The tag spread quickly, and then Twitter entered its next phase of ‘ultimate information source’. People caught up in the mess started tweeting what they were seeing and hearing where they were, which brought a new wider – if still fragmented – picture of things together. The enthusiast and specialist feeds like @flyersview and @avtips stepped up their coverage, aggregating and interpreting data from multiple sources, both official and unofficial. Within hours of airspace closing, Twitter’s unique ability to disseminate information was into probably its most important and widespread test in its relatively short life.

And so it continued. The brands who previously might have been more sceptical about using Twitter started to get in on the act, and where companies didn’t have the foresight to get involved, others did if for them. Take NATS, who run air traffic control in the UK. No official Twitter presence emerged from them (athough it has to be said that their own website proved a constant supply of basic information) – so some enterprising soul set up @nats_unofficial, and did a decent job with it too. New, dedicated accounts emerged – one example, @AshAlerts, went from being registered on Twitter on 16th Apri to 2298 followers as I write this, and provided one of the best update services during the chaos. As the situation continued, a new focus on getting people active again by alternative means sprung into life, with offers of office space, lifts to places, shared hire car offers and so on all making the best use out of Twitter’s unique, open-to-all and non-prescriptive way of working.

So, for the brands who previously thought that Twitter was just a passing fad, something they didn’t really need to be all that bothered about, this week will have been a wake-up call. Twitter has massivey proved itself to be one of the fastest-moving, most relevant sources of totally up-to-date information, data, insight and comment about what has been a quite bizarre set of circumstances. Members of the travelling public, companies, enthusiasts and experts have operated on a level playing field, each adding their own vital parts of the jigsaw. The appetite for infomation has been immense, and whilst mainstream media have – it has to be said – done well in their creative ways of unearthing and presenting news, it is Twitter that for me has been the real victor in this air travel crisis.

As I write this at 10pm on Tuesday 20th April, UK airports are all re-opening. Maybe this will be for good, and things will get back to normal over the coming days and weeks, or maybe this is a temporary opening that will end as abruptly as it came this evening. Whatever happens, Twitter’s place in the provision and dissemination of information has this week been well and truly cemented, and for any company yet to take the Twitter plunge, there can be no better example of just why they need to be using this medium, and why they need to be ready to react with no notice – quickly, without 3 weeks worth of decision making and deliberation before saying anything. By harnessing the power of their customers’ and staff’s real-time experiences with that of anyone else with interest in a subject and a desire to share what they’re seeing, brands have seen first-hand how they can really embrace social media for everyone’s benefit – it would be a particularly foolish company who didn’t sit up and take notice of the power of Twitter in particular after this week.

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