After seeing Anne’s Twitter about problems at the Georgia Dome — I turned to Google wondering what might be going on. I wondered if this was some current event, or like, maybe issues with the facility itself being talked about during the basketball game there.
The Wikipedia article for the Georgia Dome ALREADY HAD INFORMATION ABOUT THIS:
March 14, 2008 Storm
A storm blew through the downtown Atlanta area during the 2008 SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament causing some damage to the dome. The storm occured during the overtime of the Mississippi State/Alabama quarterfinal game and stopped play.
I can’t find anything about this in the major media outlets online. Clearly a potential tornado that damages a building holding thousands of people in a sporting event should be news right?
But Google is beginning to find comments in weather forums, and links to some local media outlets (and their blogs!) with the story.
Moral of the story? User-generated content (and corroboration from local news outlets, utilizing modern tools) wins again. In short order, Twitter, Google, and Wikipedia, combined with local media give me a picture of what’s happening at the Georgia Dome, faster, and more accurately, than any major media outlet.
I bet there are flickr pictures and twitters from people actually there too that won’t take long to find.
[updated to add: Anne re-tweeted within minutes this output from tweetscan]