JediMom Blog

I’m a regular user of the microblogging platform Twitter. I’ve seen a number of newspapers use Twitter simply to announce breaking stories. While that’s a fine use of Twitter, this week I found my local paper embracing a true Web2.0 community approach. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has launched a HWY40 Twitter feed and has recruited locals to tweet about traffic conditions for soon to close HWY 40.

Slated to close on Jan. 2 for up to a year, HWY 40 is a major traffic artery through St. Louis and currently carries a load of 170,000 vehicles a day. Let’s just say it is not going to be pretty. We’ve been warned. Drivers have been urged to find alternate routes and adopt mass transportation. Human nature dictates that most of us won’t worry about it until Jan. 2 or until our bosses will no longer accept it as an excuse for coming in late.

As a warm up, we’ve already seen lane closures, exit closures and bridge take-downs. I can see the Twitter feed being a great source of info for local drivers that enabled Twitter updates on their mobile phones. A few of the Tweets from the last 24 hours included:

Rule for today: avoid brentwood like a bad rash or pink eye -MCissellon40

Watching an ambulance attempt to speed through 1 lane of traffic on 170 S. at Brentwood is no fun. -SusanIskOff40

Twitter allows users to broadcast up to 140 characters at a time either via the web, instant messenger (IM) or text messages on a cell phone. In addition to the cross platform capability, Twitter has a very simple interface that takes almost no time to set up and use. In my mind, this is a huge requirement for mass adoption.

I followed HWY40 on Twitter this week and immediately got an invite to join the team. I don’t currently use HWY40 to get to work, but I’m about to get a lot more company on the routes I do take. While this project may start out with a HWY40 focus, there’s no reason why the St. Louis community can’t take it the next level and cover all the major routes.

If you’re in St. Louis, I hope to see your traffic tweets.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 5:42 am and is filed under Social Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.