Twitter, #uksnow and the annual london transport collapse

Readers from other countries that have snow will not understand this, but in the UK when we have snow the entire national transport infrastructure grinds to a halt. I read once that it is so infrequent that its not worth investing in the sort of quantities of snow moving gear that other countries do (though you would have thought that the economic losses of a day's delay in London, which has the population of many smaller European countries, would be enough to justify it).

Anyway, as readers will know I've been quite rude about Twitter as a news service at single location major events as it seems to confuse rather than help as everyone clamps on (see here for example)

However, it has been rather useful this morning as a system for polling the health of the transport system into London, mainly because Twitter gives something truly unique - the ability to collect data from a large number of points simultaneously:

- Fairly frequent updates, as people report in from various railway stations etc. The main transport websites have gone down under the load* (Wrong sort of snow inquiry). The #uksnow and @londontrains addresses have been the main rallying points (#uksnow started last night as a measure of snow depth around the UK, but has morphed this morning into a transport finding - and now sledge locating - service.)

- Searchable, so you can see all the references to stations, destinations etc that you are interested in

- Pollable: ask a question if X to Y is working and you get a few useful replies in a few minutes

(Update) Here is the mashup of the Twitterstream onto Google maps




Its a fascinating early indication of what the machine to machine (m2m) web will look like, when multiple sensors will be transmitting information like this - assuming its made publicly available of course. In theory the transport network could publish data like this already, as Tom Morris showed with his London Underground mashup.

* As did the mobile networks, while the fixed line POTS stayed up - an interesting lessons there.