TEPCO Opens 25 Location-specific Twitter Accounts For Blackout Alerts

In the wake of the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had to implement rolling blackouts due to the damage that was caused. For many people in Eastern Japan, myself included, it was often difficult during that time to find out when your zone would be subject to a planned power outage.

In order to remedy this moving forward, it seems TEPCO has enlisted the help of Twitter to get notifications to the public in a timely manner. It has established 25 different Twitter accounts, each one corresponding to a different area. Finding out which area you fall under is a little tricky, but doable.

In a statement, TEPCO said that it has enlisted some help in managing all the accounts:

In operating multiple accounts we utilize Twitter Account Management Tool
“Tweetmanager” developed and sold by Digital Garage’s subsidiary CGM
Marketing, Inc. The multiple account operation has been realized by the
improvement of “Tweetmanager” by CGM Marketing who enabled it to send
information from multiple accounts at once.

Twitter Japan has a blog post about the initiative as well.

To my knowledge, rolling blackouts stopped way back in April. I, for one, haven’t experienced any since then. But now that temperatures are getting hotter, some reports are saying that Tohoku Electric (not to be confused with Tokyo Electric) may consider blackouts.

It’s a good step, but…

This Twitter initiative is a good one, but it would have been even better five months ago when everyone was scrambling to figure out when a rolling blackout might hit their area. At that time, it was left to volunteer hackers and developers to sort through the mess. A few examples of solutions from people who stepped up:

• Blackout map (useful for determining your group)
• Improvised TEPCO usage API
• Shared blackout calendar
• Blackout schedule apps for iOS and Android

Some of these solutions may or may not be still maintained, but it was great to see volunteers stepping up with ideas when needed most. Much of the work out there was “repackaged” TEPCO information, but it does prove the benefits of making your data open and repurposable. The TEPCO/Twitter solution will be great to have in place if needed down the road, but I’m hoping that we never have to use it. Hopefully some efforts are also being made to get information to the 80 percent or so who are not on Twitter in Japan.

Privacy issue?

There might be a minor concern about TEPCO’s 25 Twitter accounts. Users who follow any of those accounts should be aware that they are disclosing their approximate geographical location. So for example, when I followed group 2-D I can view the 468 other people who are following, i.e. people who ostensibly live in the 2-D zone.

Perhaps not a big problem, but it might be a concern for Twitter users who closely guard their privacy.