#Flossie creates buzz on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

While Flossie didn?t hit the Islands with the severe weather some were prepared for, the downgraded tropical depression created its own kind of storm on social media.

Twitter?s #Flossie report generated on Tuesday morning shows more than 4,000 tweets were made by 2,169 contributors with 1,988 followers per user. The buzz reached a potential audience of 4.3 million viewers. Check out the breakdown of Flossie tweets here.

People were talking, and not just from Hawaii. Read PBN Editor-in-Chief Kevin Bumgarner?s take on how national media covered the approaching tropical storm.

The conversation extended beyond media coverage and 140-character tweets and into people?s Facebook status reports, Instagram photos, and mobile apps like KITV?s Hurricane Tracker App, which I personally downloaded and quickly became obsessed with checking for hourly updates.

While this level of engagement may seem like overkill to some, others argue it?s better to be safe than sorry. Coralie Matayoshi, CEO of the American Red Cross of Hawaii, talked story with me yesterday as the local chapter was opening emergency shelters statewide and recruiting hundreds of volunteers to ?prepare for the worst, and hope for the best,? as Mayor Kirk Caldwell publicly emphasized on Monday.

Matayoshi pointed out that the role of social media in general is literally life-saving when it comes to natural disasters. Take the deadly tornadoes that hit Oklahoma recently, she said.

?In Oklahoma, people only had 16 minutes to get out of the tornado?s [path]. We have Red Cross apps that you can download, and those saved lives because people were able to get instant notification that a tornado was coming,? she said. ?We?ve had people tell us that their grandma was saved because they were able to get out in time.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bizj_pacific/~3/hBeDUi3vFjg/flossie-creates-buzz-on-twitter.html

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