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Japan Considers '911' Calls From Twitter, Social Networks

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-need-helpville dept.

itwbennett writes "The Japanese national Fire and Disaster Management Agency today hosted the first of 3 panels to discuss allowing emergency calls to be placed through social networks. For the event, Twitter's Japanese blog posted entries on how to use the service during emergencies, one of which advised: 'If your circumstances allow, please add #survived to your tweets. This will help when family and friends that are worried about you search on your welfare.'"

1 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The fascination with "social media" needs to en by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How is twitter any better than texting in this situation? Texts will go through even if your phone connects for a fraction of a second, twitter will NOT. Texts can be sent from almost any cell phone made in the last 10 years, tweets can not. Texts can be redirected to local receiver stations if the upstream data link dies, Twitter cannot. EVERY cellphone has a texting number, only some have twitter accounts.

    Twitter may be a little cheaper, but if it's not going to cover most users, but texting will. So it sounds like you'll need to implement texting anyways, so why spend extra money and confuse people by having 2 systems?