Plane crash survivor Twitters from wreckage

By Nate Lanxon on 23 December 2008, 11:50am

"Holy f***ing s*** I was just in a plane crash!"

That was the message sent to Twitter by Mike Wilson, a resident of Denver, Colorado, shortly after Continental Flight 1404 veered from the runway in his home town, plunging into the snow-strewn surrounding area.

Armed with an iPhone and the Twitterific Twitter app, Wilson proved once and for all that when it comes to emergencies, even normal blogging is too sluggish. "Ugh... My glasses fell off in the mass exodus getting off the plane... Can't see very well," he continued, before posting a blurry photo of the crash site.

The Boeing 737-500 aircraft was ablaze, he reported, after scrambling down the plane's right wing, shortly before being taken to the airport's Presidential Club, where his trusty iPhone's battery expired, and his updates ceased until he returned home.

The Houston Business Journal reports that the flight was carrying a total of 115 passengers and crew, of which 38 suffered injuries. Fortunately, nobody was killed.

This isn't the first time Twitter has been involved in such extreme situations. In April this year, American student James Karl Buck posted a single-worded message to Twitter -- "Arrested" -- when he was thrown in an Egyptian jail after being arrested for involvement in a protest.

Colleagues back home in America were immediately aware of his situation. As a result, Buck was able to source contacts that enabled his release.

Twitter recently turned down a $500m acquisition offer from Facebook, possibly because people only use their status updates to quote song lyrics.