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Photo: Associated Press

Social media is most often thought of as the space to connect with friends (or share with them the latest laughing baby penguin video). But for the recent crisis in Japan, social platforms took on a much more serious — and crucial — role as a key information resource.

Since the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, social platforms have become hubs for critical information, a method to search for loved ones, and a way to raise urgent funds for relief efforts. After the earthquake, the U.S. embassy in Tokyo even sent a message to U.S. citizens in Japan encouraging them to use social media to connect with family. Millions of users have gone to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mixi, and other sites to share and find the latest information. According to Tweet-o-Meter, within hours of the earthquake there were over 1,200 Tweets per minute coming from Tokyo. User data like that reminds us that social media is an essential global tool in both times of peace (and, er, baby penguins) and times of immense crisis.

One particularly noteworthy aspect of the crisis response, a trend that we are seeing with previous natural disasters, is the use of mobile. Japanese citizens turned to their mobile devices when all other methods of communications were tied up. Com Score reported a significant spike in mobile usage after the earthquake and tsunami. Mobile communications were not only used for Japanese citizens to communicate, but texting also played a vital role in fundraising. Similar to their efforts for the earthquake in Haiti, the Red Cross implemented a donation by text campaign which has raised millions of dollars for the efforts so far. Other organizations have also set up donations via text message, including Save the Children and the Salvation Army.

The following are some additional highlights of the use of social media during the crisis in Japan:

• Google Person Finder – Google launched this name database site within hours of the earthquake – it can be used to look up or report missing people.
• YouTube Video Person Finder – Similar to the Google person finder, this YouTube channel aggregates messages from earthquake survivors.
• Japan Earthquake Facebook Page – An Australian news.com Facebook page with over 17,000 Likes, used as a community for information sharing.
• Twitter Hashtags – A variety of hashtags have been created in response to the disaster including #Tsunami, #JapanQuake and #Japan just to name a few.
• Crowdrise Hope for Japan – An aggregate of various Crowdrise fundraising opportunities that has raised over $1,200,000 so far.
• Flickr Galleries – A variety of Flickr galleries have been set up with cross promotions for donation opportunities.
• Live Blogging from Al Jazeera – The news site provided live blog coverage of the earthquake’s aftermath.
• Quakebook – A charity book created solely from Tweets about the earthquake.

Resources:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/11/follow-japan-earthquake-online/

http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2011/03/mobile-internet-traffic-in-japan-spikes-in-response-to-the-tsunami/

Over the last year, location-based social networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite have exploded among early adopters. It’s no question—with increasing adoption of smart phone usage, location-based social networks are rising in popularity every day.

Recently covered in GigaOM, CNN, Ad Age and The New York Times, Foursquare is currently one of the most buzzed about location-based mobile social networks. Intel and Ogilvy recently used Foursquare to drive traffic to and create buzz around Intel’s offline events and activities at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month.

For CES, Intel created a branded Foursquare page, featuring locations where Intel had activity and tips for Las Vegas visitors. Intel also rewarded check-in’s to key events with branded badges, paired with the chance to win an Intel-powered netbook for all badge recipients.

This exclusive collaboration allowed Intel to track and build relationships with online influencers active on Foursquare at CES. With more than 400 cumulative check-in’s to Intel-affiliated locations and events, the collaboration was a breakout success and proved to be an interesting event-based model for brands looking to work with Foursquare.

We interviewed Tristan Walker, head of business development at Foursquare, to learn more about their vision for what’s to come for brands, businesses and Foursquare.

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As a follow up to our recent webinar, Facebook Bootcamp for PR, you’ll see five blog posts in the coming weeks exploring the five trends set out in our presentation. With over 30 million active users Facebook Mobile is a trend that’s gaining serious momentum over the last year and eMarketer.com predicts that worldwide numbers across networks will reach 369 million by 2010. This is great news for brands looking to leverage social media for offline events; some of the new possibilities include signing up fans via SMS and extending consumer generated media programs to include mobile uploads.

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