Making History; One Tweet at a Time

There’s no shortage of discussion about how social media, and Twitter in particular is changing the way we communicate as businesses and individuals. New uses for its implementation in the PR and communications sphere continue to come to the fore on a regular basis, and at the beginning of April, I came across one of the more innovative applications I’ve seen in a while.

In the run-up to the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the comms team at The History Press, tweeting as @TitanicRealTime, delivered real time updates as if sent from passengers onboard the ship as the disaster unfolded. Whatever its initial intentions, it’s a safe bet that the mass appeal of the Titanic would have created some real buzz and awareness of The History Press outside of its usual following throughout the project – so hats-off to their PR team!

Although it’s not really something I could claim to haven been particularly interested in previously, scrolling down the micro-blog, I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the way in which they had intricately recreated the event with such detail and precision 100 years on. Without getting sidetracked on a discussion about the history of the Titanic, there are a further two implications that really stood out to me whilst browsing through the Twitter feed.

Firstly, it seems that the popularity of social media and the mass adoption of smartphones means that we’ll have far more insight and information about major historical events like the sinking of the Titanic than has ever before been possible. Even a few years ago, this wasn’t the case; looking back to 9/11, the events were reported through the cameras of news crews on the ground, taking guesses as to what was going on inside the buildings, leaving an incomplete picture (perhaps fortunately in this case). The point is that Twitter has made it possible for the history books to have a far more complete catalogue of major events that will be discussed for generations.

The other consideration (which to some extent is already being widely discussed) is how much closer together social media brings people and events. Scanning down The History Press’ mock live feed from 100 years ago, the events seemed far more real and closer than they ever would do through a television documentary or book. Whilst it would be a step too far to claim it gave the impression of actually being there, the recreation of what people might have been tweeting had the technology been available at the time certainly brought the realities a step closer to home than they had seemed to me in the past.

The fact that a fabricated Twitter feed from an event that occurred hundreds of miles away and 100 years ago, which I’ve never given much thought to in the past could have such an effect on me says quite a bit about the potential for its wider impact on society. Essentially, the rise of social networking sites like Twitter has removed the boundaries that have prevented social interactions and distanced us from each other in the past and is bringing everything and everyone closer together as a result.