#*&%^! I was just in a plane crash!

The twitter feed i captured above is that of a passenger on the Continental Airlines flight that had to abort takeoff in Denver yesterday. He also took a picture. Full story and feed here.

I have three quick thoughts on this.

1) That FCC debate on where profanity is appropriate. Yeah, whatever... It's the moment-by-moment thoughts of an airline passenger who just survived a crash (38 people were hurt, no fatalities). Cussing and praying are part of the moment.

2) This TOTALLY changes news reporting. I touched on that in an earlier post on the 1995 tsunami and how we embraced social media to circumvent the traditional media. Live feed direct from a participant to our pocket devices.

3) I'm sure Continental would love to have better control over information about this story... but (and this is a Social Media Gestalt law) information wants to be free. Each of us now carries a camera (some even video), twitter feed... and many of us full-QWERTY keyboards for blog posting. Your customers, clients, even your friends, are talking about you. All over the place. You can't battle that.

Control ain't gonna happen. Given that, how will you adjust your approach?

EDIT OF INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: Read the comments on the story. They're as revealing about online behavior as the story itself.