big boom. social media helps solve a mystery.

Social media continues to proves how valuable it is. From breaking news to helping locate people after a natural disaster. Now comes a story from Portland, Oregon where Twitter and Google Maps helped solve the mystery of the origin of a very loud "boom". To summarize, dozens people heard the loud noise and in within minutes headed to Twitter to let others know and ask who else had been witness to the strange occurrence. Within minutes, a hashtag had emerged and a local designer/geo-developer had set up a Google Map and asked people to plot their location when they heard the boom and how loud it was. What emerged was a pattern that the police were able to use to determine that the explosion most likely occurred at a local park. When they went to investigate they found the remnants of a pipe bomb. Mystery solved. You can read more about it here. I think these sorts of uses will become more and more common place as time goes on. As with so many things, you don't know the real value of a product or service until you put it in the people's hands and let them use it.