Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger

Yesterday January 15th 2009, a US Airways jetliner with 150 passengers and 5 crew members plunged into the icy Hudson River.  Due to the heroic actions of Capt. C.B. Sully Sullenberger and crew, all 150 passengers and crew are safe.

What does this have to do with Social Media?  When something happens in the real world it also happens in the so called “virtual world” of the internet and social media.  Today, less than a day after the crash, Capt. C.B. Sully Sullenberger has over 34,000 fans on Facebook.  Scratch that, its up over 36,000 just in the time that I am writing this post.  In fact now I am watching it grow real time, with about 100 joining with every refresh.  This also doesn’t take into account the Flickr images posted, Tweets from Twitter and blog posts about it over the next few days.

The offline world and online world are in fact so connected that one affects the other and vice versa.  They are no longer seperated by the closed off walls of “virtual worlds”.  Social media and new technology have just made it easier for people to communicate about what is going on in their lives, and have made it easier to talk about the real world in real time.

UPDATE:  Two days after this post there are now over 385,000 fans.  I also just learned that the first pictures of this event were posted Twitter by a person on the Ferry that helped rescue the people from the plane.  This means that, before a news crew or anyone else could get word out about the plane, it was likely first reported over social media via twitter, by a person who watched it happen.