KXLF

Posted: Mar 3, 2010 5:56 PM
Updated: Mar 4, 2010 5:31 PM

On the morning of March 5, 2009 Philip Downer and David Howlett at Manifest Creative in Four Corners had just sat down to check their social media profiles when they heard the news - there was an explosion in downtown Bozeman. It was too early in the moments after the blast for newspaper or television reports, so they turned to Twitter and Facebook where details of the horrific event were already unfolding.

They certainly weren't the only ones.

Initially there were just a few people posting pictures and updates about the scene downtown, but then came the flood, Downer remembers. Soon people across the country were talking about the explosion on Twitter and Facebook.

"It was really like a crescendo, if you will, of volume on these Web sites that towards the end of the day, I think that everybody was repeating it and telling people what they knew whether it was first-hand, whether it was through a video they had taken while they were taking their kids to school. It was just neat to see social media play such a big role in helping people find information about what was actually going on," Downer said.

This single, tragic event thrust Bozeman into the national spotlight. But before the national media could gather information and assemble stories, the events in downtown Bozeman were playing out on social media sites as they happened. As crews raced to the scene, closed streets, searched the wreckage, and battled a fire that would rage through the day and into the night, people everywhere were learning the details from bystanders and people working downtown armed with computers and social media accounts. People who were downtown when the blast happened became on-the-spot citizen journalists, sharing what they were seeing and hearing and informing the rest of the city and the world about what was happening on Main Street.

Soon the Bozeman explosion was one of the most popular topics on Twitter. The Bozeman explosion hashtag, #bozexplod, was created and used by people on Twitter to track everything that was being said about the blast.

People used these social media networks to tell others what roads were closed downtown and what alternative routes to take. Information was exchanged about what was needed downtown and where it should go.

"What I noticed is that everybody was really helpful with each other. There were a lot of people wondering how they could get to where they were going downtown without causing added confusion. Nobody wanted to add to the problem. Everybody was trying to be as helpful as possible," Howlett remembers.

In the weeks after the explosion, the social media chatter dwindled, but the online community's support of those affected by the blast did not.

Plans for a Tweetup, an in-person get-together for people on Twitter, were already in the works, but after the blast organizers decided to make some changes.

"We had organized a Tweetup at the Bacchus Pub, and after the Bozeman explosion happened, we decided that would be a good cause for a Tweetup is to actually have it benefit that because the Bozeman explosion was what kind of showed the real power of Twitter locally," said Sean Golliher, president of Future-Farm, Inc.

The Tweetup raised more than $3,000 for the Downtown Bozeman Relief Effort to help people affected by the blast.

Golliher had been using Twitter for about a year before the explosion. It was the first time he really saw the power of social media in Bozeman, he said.