Comments on: Remembering 9/11 — A Time Before Social Networks

By: Reading How High Will Real-Time Search Fly? – NYTimes.com « Fredzimny's Blog

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:01:00 +0000

[...] Remembering 9/11 – A Time Before Social Networks (gigaom.com) [...]

By: charlotteanne

charlotteanne — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:03:39 +0000

Actually, on Wall Street that day, when telephone and cell phone networks froze and email wouldn’t work, AOL’s Instant Messenger stayed up and running. I know because I used to to talk to people there and across the country that day. I guess it just didn’t know any better.
The fail whale hadn’t been invented yet ;->

By: Hicham

Hicham — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:50:25 +0000

I remember that I saw it in the news on TV back in September 2001. Nevertheless, if web 2.0 social networks were alive at that time -especially Twitter- they would have been went down because of the heavy traffic. Needless to mention that trending topics would be something like [#WTC / Falling Towers, etc.]

Anyway at this time -in 2001- there was social networking but the premier version of them, and by any mean, this was a tragedy that any human being would not accept.

By: Dilip C. Andrade

Dilip C. Andrade — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:39:22 +0000

I remember that one of the sites that didn’t crumble under the load was slashdot. If I recall correctly they moved to a static HTML page (or at least some of the page serves in the round robin load balance were done that way) to reduce the load on their servers.

They managed better than most of the news sites to get the information out because they understood how crippling the load would be and moved to a setup that allowed for the same information to be transmitted with a reduced processing load.

By: Dan Thornton

Dan Thornton — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:55:30 +0000

As many people have said before, there were plenty of social networks in existence at that time – most of my news about the events came from a couple of forums dedicated to other topics, but on which I knew a number of journalists, TV people etc, who were all constantly feeding updates back and discussing what was happening.

By: Pete Carr

Pete Carr — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:32:17 +0000

IRC played a valuable part not only in keeping the public informed, but in the days and weeks following the attacks, provided a means of communication for various military organizations.

By: Kcecelia

Kcecelia — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:32:32 +0000

In SF on 9.11. Day was totally different than a typical day. Husband called from Cisco to tell me about attacks. I drove to get him from SF to San Jose. Could not wait to get to him. 101 closed at the airport for a time because of terrorism worries and I sat and waited in the traffic. Staff at Cisco leaving to be with family. All of us clung to each other in sorrow and knowledge of the fragility of life and the terrible deaths aside from any political beliefs.

By: Rob Fahrni

Rob Fahrni — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:08:45 +0000

Oh, yeah, almost forgot! CNN and NY Times were impossible to get to. Dave Winer’s Scripting News was my primay source of information that day. (www.scripting.com/2001/09/11)

I’m fairly confident Twitter would’ve emploded under the weight.

By: Rob Fahrni

Rob Fahrni — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:54:15 +0000

I’d say we had social networks, we had weblogs. There was a constant flow of information from Dave Winer, scripting.com, as well as others. We had RSS, but I remember refreshing a few sites constantly throughout the day.

It was tight knit in 2001, so there wasn’t as much noise to sort through. Today on Twitter you’d have to sort through “OMG a plane hit the WTC!” from a gazillion people, trending would be full of garbage IMHO, but the word would’ve gotten out, that’s for sure.

I found out via a very ancient social network, my wife actually woke me and communicated it verbally. A lost art if you ask me. ;-)

I think the 2001 version was a bit better in a lot of ways.

By: bowerbird

bowerbird — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:06:33 +0000

is this a tech site?

how can you fail so utterly to know tech history?

in 2001, the purpose now served by “social networks”
was being served then by topic-oriented _listserves_…

so yeah, we got the word very quickly. indeed, i am
on the west coast, but heard about the first plane and
turned on the t.v. even before the second plane hit…

-bowerbird

By: Janez

Janez — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:55:36 +0000

Twitter would crash very fast, so it would be mostly like in 2001 (radio and TV).

There would be a lot more pictures published about the event.

Dow Jones is today at 9605, just like in 2001.

By: Charlotte-Anne Lucas

Charlotte-Anne Lucas — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:35:12 +0000

Om,
We did have rudimentary social networks,including AOL’s INstant Messenger service, with its Buddy Lists. I was on AOL IM that day with one of the columnists I edited for TheStreet.com.
I wrote about it here: http://bit.ly/ZpY9B
I drew a lot of curious stares from reporters at MSM because I took the step of saving to my hard drive that IM and 34 others from colleagues at TheStreet.com that day.

By: WWD Weekend Reading List

WWD Weekend Reading List — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:01:32 +0000

[...] GigaOM: “Remembering 9/11 — A Time Before Social Networks” [...]

By: Anon

Anon — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:15:25 +0000

No social networks before 9/11? Rubbish. Why do people always neglect to think about Instant Messaging networks? Information flows through them just as well as through Twitter.

By: Anand Srinivasan

Anand Srinivasan — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:11:27 +0000

Nothing would have changed…In 2001, people got to know about the attacks through radio and TV.., if it were to happen today, most of us would have still gotten to know about it through the same medium, and a fair bunch of us would have been on Twitter and Facebook to show “how concerned we are”..

That apart nothing changes..The same number of people would have died..It does not change anything for people who are at Ground Zero..

This post actually makes me cringe!

By: Timo Luege

Timo Luege — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:13:50 +0000

My, admittedly rather cynical, opinion: More people would have died or gotten hurt as people would have stayed closer to the towers to take videos and photos for “12 seconds” or “Twitpic”.