waiting

I am waiting for a delayed flight from Boston to Pittsburgh, on my way to the Technology in the Arts conference at Carnegie Mellon University, and I'm remembering Beth Kanter's recent post about twittering her friends from a similar state just yesterday.

I am relatively new to twitter, and so only have a few people who follow me on it, so I have turned to blogging, as usual, to pass the time and reach out to the world. I did send out a flyer of a message on twitter, about being stuck in Logan, wishing that I had a pizza, or something equally delicious, waiting for me in Pittsburgh. But all that I am likely to find there is a stale Toblerone in the minifridge. We'll see what the response is -- maybe the late-night pizza-loving community of Pittsburgh will come to my rescue!

But it does make me think about the real-world application of apps like twitter. The potential is there for massive real-time response to calls for help, calls for action, calls for any sort of response. I wonder has this happened yet on any grand scale? Or even a relatively grand scale?

How can organizations best go about building networks on twitter that could offer this sort of rapid response? I'm sure it's more a question of how to get the folks already hooked into twitter to be interested in your cause or event, than it is about trying to crowbar your existing network onto an unfamiliar technology platform...

I'd love to know if anybody has really tried to get a mass response through twitter yet, how they did it, and how it all worked out (what was the result?).

I'd also love to know where I can get a pizza.