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Best Circular Use of Twitter in Charlottesville this Week

By: Marijean Jaggers | 08/07/2009

In my community, I am the social media correspondent for the Charlottesville Newsplex, a broadcast organization with local affiliates of Fox, ABC and CBS. In this role, I do a live TV segment once a week and remain on call for the news staff to contact in the event of a social media-related news story. Thursday, such a story emerged, with hackers targeting Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal in an unprecedented denial-of-service attack.

The Newsplex staff tried to reach me on my cell phone, but since I was in a meeting, I didn't get the call immediately. The staff has learned from experience that the fastest way to "turn on the bat signal" is to shoot me a direct message on Twitter -- they did so, communicating in under 140 characters the story, the reporter and their need. When I saw the tweet, I happened to be getting into my car, and was around the corner from the station, so I headed directly there, sending @CBS19 a tweet when I arrived saying "I'm in your lobby."

The reporter emerged and we put together a story that involved Twitter -- which I of course, tweeted about to let viewers know to tune in -- a very satisfying circle of Twitter use in a single day.

Video of the clip is on Newsplex.com

Posted in Digital Communications