Talkwalker, a social data intelligence company, sent me this release on the impact social media played while covering Hurricane Harvey.
NEW YORK --- Social media is playing no small role in this weekend’s catastrophic slamming into the Texas coast by Hurricane Harvey and the subsequent unprecedented flooding in the Houston area.CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here
People needing to be rescued from roofs tweeted their addresses to emergency officials.
Instagram was filled with unbelievable photos of high water marks and Facebook groups popped up to organize financial and other help for victims.
In fact, between Friday and Monday, more than three million social posts used hashtags like #HarveyRescue, #HurricaneHarvey, #Harvey, #Harvey2017 and #HarveyStorm, according to international social media analytics firm Talkwalker.
While the top social post was a NASA Instagram photo of the hurricane from space, (https://www.instagram.com/p/BYOzEg5Bgr7/) with more than a half million likes, Kris Jenner checked in with the second top post, this Instagram of support for victims. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYUJDgCFc_V/, which garnered more than 288,000 likes.
Heart-wrenching posts like this one from a local television anchor (KPRC's Sara Donchey) showed the human side of the tragedy. And the willingness for neighbors to help neighbors. https://twitter.com/KPRC2Sara/status/901802530597986305 and was retweeted more than 25,000 times.
Many social posts featured this spirit of neighbors helping neighbors as the call went out for those with flat bottomed boats to assist. This Tweet was shared more than 16,000 times. https://twitter.com/BasedMonitored/status/901887680157556736
And this post shows just how resourceful a father can be when it comes to saving his family. https://twitter.com/Muhammediceland/status/901925163419172866
Twitter was responsible for at least one dramatic rescue after this shocking photo Tweeted by a relative of one of the residents of a nursing home, who sent him the photo as water rose. The post was retweeted more than 2,000 times and aired on local and national news, helping to expedite a rescue of the 15 residents by authorities. https://twitter.com/DividendsMGR/status/901805509950541825/photo/1
Talkwalker (www.talkwalker.com) is one of the world’s leading social data intelligence companies. Its cutting edge technology provides actionable social media insights through real-time social listening and advanced social media analytics. Talkwalker helps marketers to prove the value of their social efforts and significantly enhances the speed and accuracy of business decision-making. Talkwalker’s state of the art social intelligence platform monitors and analyzes online conversations on social networks, news websites, blogs, forums and more, in over 187 languages. Its 1500 servers process posts from 150 million websites every day.
