Recently, Kai Ryssdal, host of Marketplace (produced by American Public Media and broadcast on National Public Radio) interviewed James O’Byrne, director of content for the New Orleans Times Picayune website, NOLA.com.

Introducing the program, Ryssdal noted that the website not only presented details about what was happening during Isaac “but also what residents of New Orleans are experiencing. NOLA.com has become kind of a public repository for up to the minute information about the storm, [including] pictures and tweets.”

Ryssdal was intrigued that during a hurricane people would “have time to pick up their phone or take out their iPad or whatever it is and take a picture and have the presence of mind to send it along.”

O’Byrne responded, “One of the things that happened in Katrina is we became one of the most smartphone intensive cities in America because a lot of people didn’t even replace their land lines after the storm. We saw last night [August 28] the highest activity on the site was actually after 9 o’clock when we saw a burst in social media activity. That’s when the weather got really bad and that’s when the power started going out, so that’s when people were participating in these conversations and we saw that activity continue all through the night.”

O’Byrne also said that people were “partly looking for information and partly they’re intensely interested in sharing information. The social media space, the instinct is to share here’s what’s happening to me or here’s what’s happening in my neighborhood. And because smartphones have become so powerful, we see videos, we see photographs, and we see texts and tweets that just tell us in real time as conditions change what’s going on around the city.”