Mexican President Tweets Category 4 Hurricane Alert

In a sign of the (social media) times, Mexican President Felipe Calderon used Twitter this morning to warn his people that Hurricane Karl could hit Mexico as a Category 4. By mid-afternoon, his tweet had been quoted or mentioned in newspapers and radio and television stories around the world.

“An alert for Hurricane Karl in the nation’s central states,” President Calderon’s tweet said in Spanish. “[It] could convert to a Category 4. It will enter through Veracruz around midday.”

President Calderon achieved global media coverage without a press release or news conference. By only sending out a 137-character message on the popular microblogging service, he and his staff presumably were able to focus their time on disaster preparation in the hours before the hurricane hit and not getting the message out. He also seems to have done it without speaking to a single journalist.

President Calderon only opened his @FelipeCalderon Twitter account four months ago. By Sept. 8, he had reached 100,000 followers, prompting him to tweet in Spanish: “We have reached more than 100,000 followers already interested in this way of communication. Thank you and good day to all.” Today, a little more than a week later, he has some 158,000.

President Calderon has been using Twitter to publicize all his administrations achievements, comment on events, issue warnings about storms and weather, and respond personally to questions and suggestions sent to him from the general public.

Accordingly to a comScore study released last month, Twitter is slighly more popular in Mexico than in the United States. The study, documenting Twitter’s surging popularity worldwide, found 13.4 percent of Mexicans age 15 and older visited Twitter.com from a home or work location in June 2010 compared with 11.9 percent of Americans.

Do you think social media means the death of the press release? What about news conferences? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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