Crowdsourcing Help During Atlanta Snow Storm

January 30, 2014 By IdeaConnection

1510783_805967892762852_774635400_nThe huge snow storm hitting the southern United States continues to wreak havoc with gridlocked roads, abandoned cars and stranded motorists.

In Atlanta, one of the worst affected cities many residents have turned to crowdsourcing and social media to stay informed and offer assistance to others.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have all been used by people to share their experiences of what is happening. But the crowd is also offering valuable and potentially life-saving help.

Snowed Out Atlanta

One woman created a Facebook page called SnowedOutAtlanta to help match stranded motorists with strangers who are willing to help out. The page also includes lots of helpful advice and a link where people whose cell phones are about to run out can pin their last location before they lose their service.  Locals are also using it to provide salutatory tales for other residents as well as pictures and details of lost pets.

Valuable Service

SnowedOutAtlanta was started by Michelle Sollicito as a way to connect friends who needed help with friends who were able to give it. But the page soon took on a life of its own. Such is the need for this useful crowdsourced service that there are now several regional pages. At one point, 300 people were joining every fifteen minutes, according to AJC.com.  The page currently has around 55,000 members.

Other crowdsourcing forms of help in the Atlanta area include people posting Google maps to help others easily find places where they can go for help.


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