I’m sure most of you remember when the plane went down in the Hudson River.

Do you also remember the photo that accompanied most of the news reports?

It was the image to the left, which was tweeted by one Janis Krums, who was on the ferry crossing the River when the plane landed and he tweeted a photo of it.

This is when Twitter became a household name and it fundamentally changed the way we communicate.

You see, the news was not only reported by a citizen, but it was accompanied by an image. And it spread like wildfire on Twitter before traditional media had a chance to even get to the scene to begin their reporting.

This is also when you began to see the ticker along the bottom of television news reports that says something along the lines of, “This is being reported on Twitter, but has not yet been confirmed.” (more…)