Twitter comes in handy as Haitians pick up the pieces

Every five seconds, 40 new tweets appear on Haiti on the online social network, Twitter.

The statistic is testament to the outpouring of the world’s grief over last week’s 7.0 earthquake estimated to have killed at least 100,000 people . It is also a testament to a growing dependency on technology for communication.

Twitter, a service that lets users post short messages using their internet connection about what they are doing, has been become the primary communication channel for the Haiti disaster.

People trapped in rubble have accessed the service using data enabled phones to let rescuers know their whereabouts, while others are using the website to let relatives know of their whereabouts and to send updates on what is happening on the ground.

Early this week, US President Barack Obama posted his first ever tweet on the website during a visit to the Red Cross Disaster Operations Centre in Washington, DC to engage in a little social networking asking people to help Haiti.

His tweet simply said – “President Obama and the First Lady are here visiting (the Red Cross) disaster operation centre right now”.

The American Red Cross is relying heavily on technology to speed up its rescue operations. It launched a SMS fundraising campaign a few hours after the earthquake hit Haiti last Tuesday.

Recording an impressive 10,000 SMS-based donations every second in the US alone, the service has raised the huge amount of money in a relatively short time.

By mid this week, SMS donations from people around the world had pushed the Red Cross Haiti kitty to $21 million — a feat that would have been near impossible before the arrival of the mobile phone.

The Red Cross used social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to spread awareness on the campaign, indicating that the websites have edged a notch higher in their relevance to business and social enterprise.

All eyes are on Haiti —and that applies in the technological world too.

At this moment, satellite networks are been diverted to focus on the island in order to shore up the country’s communication centres, many of which were irreparably damaged during the earthquake.

The satellites are being used to provide communication links to aid agencies and the military.

But perhaps the most heartening effort application of technology in Haiti is the use of Ushahidi, a Kenyan born product. Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Kiswahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.

The website mapped incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on citizen reports submitted via the web and mobile phone.

This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, its developers say this was the catalyst for them realising there was a need for the platform on a larger scale.

Volunteer teams

It is now being used in Haiti to map and integrate crowdsourced information that is being used by both people on the ground who need help and those who can provide relief.

Teams of volunteers in Kenya, Uganda and the US have been working to solidify the platform and make this effort work.