Is Facebook and Twitter the new, new media?

When the lights went out I got more news from Facebook and Twitter than I did from traditional media.
Like thousands in Southeast Michigan the Monday after Palm Sunday, I lost electric power at my house when heavy, wet spring snow snapped tree limbs and power lines.
I woke and found a dark house, without the bright red LED of my bedroom alarm clock. I made my way to my home office. tapped the screen of my iPhone and found it was around a few minutes before 6 AM.
Instead of stumbling through the dark of my rapidly cooling house, I made my way back under the covers with the iPhone, fired up an application called WunderRadio and tuned in my local radio stations on my iPhone. All I got was commercials, then sports, then more commercials, lots of national headlines. Five minutes went by with no info on power outages or storm damage. I needed long tail specific niche info and I needed it now.
But like a Borders that only stocks the best sellers, traditional media delivered mainstream news that was broad and general and far from my neighborhood or powerless situation.
So I tuned out the radio stations, fired up an iPhone application called Tweetie and simultaneously posted a short note on Twitter and Facebook about my power outage, seeking information from others.
Within three minutes after the post appeared on Twitter and Facebook, I started getting responses from friends and followers. Even at that early hour, I quickly heard from people in a half dozen nearly communities. I learned from a friend on Facebook that 25,000 people around me were without power. I suppose if I stayed tuned in to news radio listening to the radio commercials and the irrelevant chit chat on the morning radio shows that some announcer eventually would have told me that. Indeed, that’s probably where my Facebook friend got those numbers.
But the point is, Facebook is where I got that information first, when I wanted it. Not radio. Not the online local newspapers, either.
And later in the day, another friend offered his house for a shower. Another offered to bring me a generator to use till the power came on. Traditional media sure couldn’t have done that.
My experience with the power outage ended about 5 PM when, like magic, the lights came back on, the furnace fired up and the heat began to rise. Amazing how we take such basics light light and warmth for granted, isn’t it? But the experience of my iPhone twittering vividly demonstrated how immediate and powerful social media can be.
I’m thinkin the world has changed again.
Traditional media has fallen yet further behind. People have made their own connections and have found ways to get the word out - whatever that word may be - independent of the old media.

SOURCE: PCMIKE.COM