A national safety group working with the U.S. government called The Safe America Foundation, announced that text messaging, social networking sites, andTwitter might be able to help families stay in touch in the wake of a disaster. In yesterday's statement, the matter of Twitter's dependability is discussed, but in emergency situations when phone lines and other traditional communication lines are down, social networking sites like it and others could turn into reliable backup methods for reaching loved ones.
Starting on September 11th and lasting through October, 20,000 people are expected to participate in emergency training drills in which the use of these alternative tools will be practiced. Some participants are people who volunteered on Safe America's website, but the majority of them will be employees from major companies like UPS, Allstate, Motorola and Office Depot where testing will be done on the companies' property.
For many of the youunger generations, turning to a communication platform like Twitter or SMS when the landlines go down might be second nature, but if your friends and family don't know how to access Twitter's website, tweeting "Help!" or "I'm safe" isn't going to be very useful. That's why the foundation has deemed it important to focus on training large groups how modern social networking sites and Twitter can work towards the safety of the population. Courtesy of readwriteweb.com
