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Tag: frankenstorm

  • Foursquare CEO Shares Hurricane Sandy Adventures

    New York-based Foursquare has had to temporarily move its operations thanks to Hurricane Sandy. CEO Dennis Crowley has been sharing frequent tweets about his Frankenstorm adventure:

    Crowley talks more about the storm and its impact on Foursquare in this interview with Kara Swisher:

    Two hours ago, Crowley checked in on Foursquare at Foursquare HQ Midtown (temp location, #Sandy), sharing the following pics:

    Foursquare Temporary HQ

    Foursquare HQ

    Foursquare HQ

    Foursquare HQ

  • Fake Storm Photos From Hurricane Sandy Shouldn’t Get Too Far, Thanks To Social Media

    As you’ve no doubt seen, photos from Hurricane Sandy have flooded (no pun intended) the Internet on social media and photo sharing sites like Flickr and Instagram.

    Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told Poynter on Monday that there were 10 pictures per second being posted with the hashtag #sandy. And that was just Instagram, and before much of the effects were really felt. There was a lot of talk that the “Frankenstorm” was Instagram’s “big citizen journalism moment”.

    Sarah Lacy at Pando Daily wrote as much, saying, “The time when the seemingly frivolous app could get some Arab Spring-style gravitas. Just like the last three Presidential elections have been transformed by a new social media service — YouTube, Facebook and now Twitter — natural disasters and tragedies are emerging as a way for social media services to gain respect and legitimacy as world-changing agents as well.”

    “In theory, Instagram has Twitter’s immediacy, and a broader reach, since it pushes notices out via Twitter, Facebook, Instgram’s own network, and email,” she said. “Clearly images are the best way to tell a story like this, and Instagram’s whole raison d’être is to make people better photographers. Add to that the storm’s target on urban, hipster, we’re-not-scared New Yorkers, and the time seems as good as any for the revolution to be Instagrammed.”

    Among all of these amazing photos and revolutionary visual citizen journalism, however, are a whole bunch of fakes, for better or for worse. It’s nothing new for social media to spread misinformation (see the countless Twitter death hoaxes of the past), so it’s not surprising that photos from the storm are no different.

    Not everybody sees this as such a bad thing though.

    “For the most part, however, these fake shots seem to be coming from East Coasters like me who are so tired of stressing out over this that we’ve turned to the best coping mechanism of all, making fun of stuff,” writes Helen A.S. Popkin in a Today Show blog post.

    Hoaxes and fakes do have a way of working themselves out in social media. John Herman at BuzzFeed actually wrote an interesting article about the natur of Twitter when it comes to dispelling false information. In fact, that article talks about false tweets about flooding at the New York Stock Exchange.

    “Twitter’s capacity to spread false information is more than cancelled out by its savage self-correction. In response to thousands of retweets of erroneous Weather Channel and CNN reports that the New York Stock Exchange had been flooded with ‘three feet’ of water, Twitter users, some reporters and many not, were relentless: Photos of the outside of the building, flood-free, were posted. Knowledgeable parties weighed in.”

    While the piece is mostly about Twitter, you might say this kind of scenario can easily play out across social media channels. Herman even notes that the “micro-controversy drew to a close” when someone posted a pic of the dry building on Instagram (which was of course tweeted).

    [Lead image via BuzzFeed]

  • Man In Horse Mask Braves Hurricane Sandy

    A man in a horse mask would be funny regardless of the situation, but a recent stunt on live news has given us some laughter during what’s becoming a terrible natural disaster. Our heroic horse mask wearing jogger was spotted while a local NBC affiliate was covering the storm.

    According to The Washington Post, the man’s name is Jimmy Kruyne. He only intended to run past the camera as a joke, but didn’t expect to get so much attention. Here’s the video that catapulted him into stardom:

    Hurricane Sandy is shaping up to be one of the worst natural disasters of our time. The pictures being posted to Instagram already show a ridiculous amount of flooding in the New Jersey and New York areas. It also looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

    It’s in these moments that we can remember the man in the horse mask and laugh. He brought some joy, however little, into our lives as we watch such a terrible storm unfold in the Northeast.

  • People Are Posting A Ridiculous Amount Of Hurricane Sandy (Frankenstorm) Pictures To Instagram

    People are posting a ridiculous amount of images of Hurricane Sandy and its effects on Instagram. Users are posting ten pics to the hashtag #sandy every second. That’s according to the CEO of the company, who is quoted by Poynter as saying:

    “There are now 10 pictures per second being posted with the hashtag #sandy — most are images of people prepping for the storm and images of scenes outdoors.”

    All you have to do is look at the hashtag, and you can see the tremendous amount of contributions. While the number will obviously be higher by the time you see this article, there are 226,019 photos for #sandy as of the time of this writing. There are 132,349 photos for #hurricanesandy. There are 26,612 for #frankenstorm.

    Here are a few examples (from users omyfabulouslife, jmmantel, and gpeck1 respectively):

    Crane

    Frankenstorm

    Frankenstorm on Instagram

    Instagram highlights some good ones on its blog.

    Of course Instagram isn’t the only place people are posting photos. You can easily go to Twitter or Facebook and find plenty. Here’s one of the crane dangling from a building that Donald Trump posted to Facebook.

    It’s nothing new for news to visually unfold on social media, but these numbers from Instagram seem to suggest a trend we might see escalate going forward – instagram as a major force in citizen journalism. Sarah Lacy at PandoDaily has already discussed the topic today.

    “Hurricane Sandy — or Frankenstorm Apocalpyse as it’s being called on Foursquare — could be Instagram’s big citizen journalism moment,” she writes. “The time when the seemingly frivolous app could get some Arab Spring-style gravitas. Just like the last three Presidential elections have been transformed by a new social media service — YouTube, Facebook and now Twitter — natural disasters and tragedies are emerging as a way for social media services to gain respect and legitimacy as world-changing agents as well.”

    “In theory, Instagram has Twitter’s immediacy, and a broader reach, since it pushes notices out via Twitter, Facebook, Instgram’s own network, and email,” she adds. “Clearly images are the best way to tell a story like this, and Instagram’s whole raison d’être is to make people better photographers. Add to that the storm’s target on urban, hipster, we’re-not-scared New Yorkers, and the time seems as good as any for the revolution to be Instagrammed.”

    I imagine we’ll be seeing quite a few Instagram pics from a certain election before long.

    Instagram was probably not a bad acquisition on Facebook’s part. It even turned out to be millions of dollars less than the originally-reported $1 billion.

  • Crane Dangles From High-Rise, Donald Trump Shares Photo

    A crane was found hanging from the side of a high-rise luxury apartment building in Manhattan today, courtesy of Hurricane Sandy. Donald Trump shared the following image on Facebook (and tweeted a link to it):

    (image)

    “Direct view of crane from apartment window. Crane was never properly secured, blowing in the breeze,” he said.

    He also tweeted:

    Trump offered additional tweets related to the hurricane:

    He also recalled a time when he went to go see Madonna live:

    Of course Trump isn’t the only celebrity tweeting about the storm:

    As far as the crane situation goes, NBC News reports: “Police have shut down traffic and evacuated the upper floors of buildings in the area around the 90-story building, One57, although there were no immediate plans to remove the crane because of the danger, WNBC reported. Officials were studying the situation and trying to decide how to deal with it.”

    The building is at 157 W. 57th St.

  • Hurricane Sandy (Frankenstorm) Gets Google Crisis Response Maps

    Google’s Crisis Response team has put together a Hurricane Sandy map with location tracking, public alerts, radar/cloud imagery, evacuation information, shelters and storm footage.

    “Already responsible for a reported 41 deaths across the Caribbean, late-season Hurricane Sandy is expected to make landfall again early this week on the East Coast of the United States,” said Google software engineer Ka-Ping Yee. “Some are calling the hurricane ‘Frankenstorm’ due to its potential mix of both winter and tropical cyclone weather. Regardless of what you call it, we hope that you get the information you need to make preparations and stay safe if you are in the area. It has the potential to be one of the worst storms the area has seen in decades.”

    The location tracking includes the hurricane’s current and forecasted paths. The data comes from the NOAA-National Hurricane Center.

    The public alerts include evacuation notices, storm warnings, etc. This data comes from weather.gov and earthquake.usgs.gov.

    The radar and cloud imagery is from weather.com and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Shelter and recovery center info appears as such facilities become operational.

    The storm footage comes from YouTube, as curated by Storyful. The map, is embeddable (just click the share button to grab the code):

    Additionally, Google has launched a map for New York City with evacuation zone info from NYC Open Data, open shelters, weather info and live webcams.

  • Frankenstorm 2012: Space Station View Is Insane

    Hurricane Sandy, or “Frankenstorm” as it’s been renamed, is quickly making its way toward the Eastern seaboard and is sending many into a panic.

    While it’s always good to be prepared in a situation like this–where hurricane-force winds merge with cold air coming down from Canada–there’s always the possibility that things are getting blown out of proportion, especially since the storm is so unpredictable. If it veers north, there will still be rain and likely damage, but nothing like the billion-dollar mess which is being predicted. In other words, forecasters say, be prepared, but don’t freak out.

    What’s making things difficult, however, are the images of the storm from space, which are hard to comprehend and terrifying at the same time. First, there was this one, from the International Space Station:

    (image)

    Then came this one, which is in infrared and seems so much more sinister:

    (image)

    Meteorologists first thought that the storm could veer off, away from the coast, but now predictions are that it will hit right before Halloween and could possibly drop tons of snow up north.

    “The current forecast track from the National Hurricane Center brings Sandy in for a landfall in central New Jersey on Tuesday, Oct. 30,” Rob Gutro of NASA said. “Regardless, it appears that Sandy may be a strong wind event for the U.S. mid-Atlantic and Northeast.”

    The storm has already hit the Bahamas, Cuba, and Jamaica and has a death toll of around 20 people.