Sentinel on YouTube, Flickr, Coveritlive during tsunami
When the tsunami headed our way, the initial warning went out near midnight. Everyone in Santa Cruz County woke up and had to figure out how to deal with the tsunami. People in low-lying areas were warned by reverse 911 calls.
As we do with breaking news that affects most of the county, we opened a live conversation for sharing information and asking and answering questions. Parents with students at UCSC quickly learned that the campus was in no danger.
Updates were shared throughout the day, with thousands of posts through the coveritlive conversation.
When the first wave hit, one of our photo interns, Larissa Mueller, sent us video from her iPhone. We were among the first to post video of the event and the first surge was pretty minor. Earlier in the week, we had connected our Brightcove account with our YouTube account, so that video we post to Sentinel.com also automatically gets posted to YouTube as well.
Since Friday, our YouTube account has received nearly 300,000 page views. Reader Ryan Beauregard sent us his video (“Holy Crap!”) on Friday afternoon, showing the bigger surge through the harbor. That video has received more than 150,000 views.
Our website received more traffic on Friday than it had for any other news event (369,000 page views).
We also made the first significant use of our Flickr photo stream during the event and received another 30,000 views there.
Thanks to all who clicked, joined the conversation, sent us photos and video, and who shared and received information through our services.
