#darkto

I woke up to reading about the power outage in the west end of Toronto. I also woke up to reading about how Twitter has been really helpful in communicating things during the outage.

• Twitter
• what's going on in T.O
  
• how twitter is helping

The hash tag (techie way of marking topics/conversations) the Toronto power outage is #darkto. People put that tag in their tweet (what its called when you post using Twitter) and then you can read allllll of the tweets that have that tag.

If you go to see all the #darkto tweets you can see how people are using this to keep each other updated. People are reporting when their power has come back on; others are talking about how the public transit is going (or not going); some are posting tips from the city on how and what to do about your water pipes.

I, of course wanted to get in on this action (from the comfort of my warm bedroom in London, still in my pjs). So I started reading the tags. I answered one guy's question about where the outage was because he thought the tag was vague. A little later a woman had read a tweet about the city having set up places where you could be to get warm. But there was no indication of where they were. So she asked where they were. I had read where they were in the CBC article about the outage, so I posted a reply to this woman. A good few minutes later someone else sort of tried to point her in the right direction. She replied with this:

MissHC: @conniecrosby Thanks, but I already got it from @Lstew gotta love #darkto! :)

Hooray, I got to help someone find shelter and be a part of the current most popular hash tag. I think I deserve 2 naps today for that.