Following the recent plane crash in the Hudson River there’s been quite a bit of discussion about how Twitter was the first place people shared what was happening. In the weird way human interest works, this ‘shock news’ was good stuff.

This morning Wellington had a rather unique powercut that wiped out much of the city’s power for quite some time. I was amused that my response to this situation was to drop a tweet on my phone to explain there was a powercut in Island Bay.

As a result I found out other Wellingtonians I follow on Twitter were also experiencing power issues. This was useful information and assured me the powercut was not just my issue.

About 20 minutes later Radio NZ broadcasted that there’d been a powercut in Wellington.

The Internet was designed and built by the military to ensure communications could not be broken by one fault. If one part fell over the network would find another route for the information flow.

I thought it interesting that when the power went down in my town, I went to Twitter on my mobile. And with Twitter now overtaking Digg in marketshare visits last week I’m not alone.

Perhaps something Civil Defence and other emergency services should take note of?

Ok, on my two monitors I’ve got two Skypechats, Outlook, Twitter and Facebook open. Add to that quick access to my core client’s email exchange, a landline and mobile phone.

Communication access is NOT the problem.

Interesting how a single verb can build up momentum. The term of the day is “mobilise” or if you’re an American “mobilize”. Barack Obama’s ability to mobilise new voters into polling booths in the US Presidential election has been impressive. But now I hear Helen Clark is quoted as saying voter “…mobilisation really is the key issue now.”

I wonder how Vodafone feel about politicians pinching their call plan vernacular…

Short of the birth and death notices, when was the last time you read the classified ad section in a newspaper?

Increasingly New Zealanders are seeing their opinions in the headlines. I’m interested in how online comments and poll results from Stuff and the NZ Herald are now making print news headlines as editors try to share the mood of the nation.

This week’s launch of the iPhone 3G in NZ has been a terrific illustration of how comment boards attached to online articles are being used to define the editorial perspective of subsequent news media.

The public have been quick to spot and comment on a weakness in Vodafone’s greatly anticipated launch, with most people fuming about the iPhone’s expensive unit cost and pricing plans. And the NZHerald and Stuff wasted absolutely no time reporting this frustration as news.

This sort of open review by ‘innovators and early adopters’ about technology products has been happening in the blogosphere for years, but now the chasm has been crossed, and the ‘early majority’ are getting the lowdown delivered to their desktop through their daily news media.

The ease and speed with which people can air their views now has a massive influence on sales and brands. Companies need to acknowledge and respect this. At the end of the day, marketing is about the customer’s needs and wants.

Now it’s up to Telecom to read the nation’s mood and come up with a supercheap pricing plan for their iPhone users that blows Vodafone out of the water.