‹‹RWD: 2001

I’m just coming back from dinner in Red Hook, and the taxi drove along downtown Manhattan across the river on the way home. When I realized that it was September 11, and would have I been taking the same ride exactly six years ago, I would have seen the Twin Towers for the last time.

But six years ago, i was living in London. And I was at work as usual when I’ve received that email from my old boss in Paris (roughly quoting): “Un avion s’est écrasé sur l’une des Twin Towers. Va sur le site de cnn.” Or in English: “A plane hit one of the Twin Towers. Go on cnn.com”.

The attacks on the WTC were the first and most seismic news events in the Web Era:
(Pew Internet Report, The commons of the tragedy)

More than two-thirds of Internet users (69%) have used the Web to get news and information related to the attacks and their aftermath. Half of Internet users – more than 53 million people – have gotten some kind of news about the attacks online. Many online Americans have used the Internet to stay “on alert” for news developments by subscribing to email news updates and getting newscasts streamed to their desktops.

The demand for online information was so overwhelming that most of the news site became unaccessible, forcing their editor to strip them down to text-only version.

Few links:

• Gallery of news sites homepages around the world on 09/11.
• Fascinating analyze of how Google handled the events and how the attacks reshaped the search engine.
• Really moving stream of the live events on abc.