Some people have Wifi but not cell phone signal. A single tweet has very robust, existing infrastructure, over the “one email per person in a mailing list” style of email; and SMS is DoA when there’s no cell phone.
Some people have Wifi but not cell phone signal. A single tweet has very robust, existing infrastructure, over the “one email per person in a mailing list” style of email; and SMS is DoA when there’s no cell phone.
I can't imagine a disaster apocalyptic enough to take out cell phone service but somehow spare the power and the internet. Seems like one of those things that you would never have to prepare for and be alright.
There are places that don’t … have … sufficient cell service, as a starting point.
No phone, no TV, only a PC that they sit at logged in to Twitter all day refreshing their feed in case a local emergency comes up?
They have a cell phone on them because they have WiFi in their house, because they have Internet, and they have notifications turned on to their local emergency servers. Since Twitter has a push notifications and a shorter refresh timer, you get messages more regularly that you’ll actually read.
Compare that to email, which you’d get hundreds of messages a day and only care about 3 of them, so you’re not constantly checking.
Edit: dude you live in Australia. Do you know how people in the Bush get their emergency updates that they need to respond to urgently? I bet at least some of them use Twitter or something similar to it. They're not huddled around their weather radio all day (and that doesn't cover everything). Because I had family in rural California and that is exactly how they got theirs. Twitter and Facebook.