It’s no surprise when popular Twitter accounts come and go. But flourishing successors do not always rise in their place.
Yet, from the ashes of @AthensScanner, @OUScanner has come.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a weekly series examining social media accounts both affiliated and not affiliated with Ohio University. The name of the creator of
@OUScanner has been withheld from this article at his request.
It’s no surprise when popular Twitter accounts come and go. But flourishing successors do not always rise in their place.
Yet, from the ashes of @AthensScanner, @OUScanner has come.
When @AthensScanner mysteriously vanished from Twitter a year ago, @OUScanner took over as the go-to source for live tweets from the police and fire scanners in Athens.
The accounts have many similarities. The student who runs @OUScanner was involved with @AthensScanner before it was disbanded. @OUScanner constantly live tweets 911 situations and emergency happenings, just like its predecessor.
After leaving @AthensScanner, the creator of @OUScanner took an interest in listening to police feeds.
“That’s when I purchased my own scanner, about halfway through last (academic) year, which is also shortly after Halloween when the @AthensScanner mysteriously disappeared,” he said.
The account operator — who is a graduate student — then saw an opening in the market to have his own account that did relatively the same thing. Now, he works with one other person to live tweet Athens happenings.
“I didn’t expect it to get a huge following, I expected to start out slow,” he said. “By the end of the year, I had several thousand followers, which was really quite exciting and surprising. It kind of just exploded from there on.”
The report of a shooting at Gamertsfeder Hall this summer was the first time that he felt his presence was important in the online community.
Another time of realization was when a student collapsed at Ping Recreation Center. “That was the first instance that I heard when someone who could have died. That was kind of just scary to realize (that I could potentially hear things like that),” the account’s creator said.
That’s when he understood he was “an information source for the students of Athens.”
Some students think the account is a great source of news, like Stephen Babayemi. “It’s really entertaining,” said Babayemi, a sophomore studying health services administration. “If you get on Twitter a lot … it keeps you really informed.”
Others are not so convinced.
“I don’t follow it (but) I’ve seen it retweeted onto my timeline,” said Erin Kelly, a freshman studying industrial systems.
As to why she does not follow the account, Kelly said, “I figure if anything is important, someone will retweet it.”
But there are some things the creator says he will not tweet.
“I do not tweet anything of a personal nature, such as suicide threats or attempts or overdoses,” he said. “The most common things I tweet are generic EMS calls to residential halls and other places, pretty much all fire calls.”
“The only times I kind of filter what I’m tweeting are on busy days, like Friday and Saturdays.”
While the future is still murky for the account, the operator did say that he would be willing to pass it on to another person.
“If someone else were to purchase their own scanner and I thought they were reputable enough I may give them access to take it over,” he said.
He said the account gains more followers when things happen around town.
“It’s unfortunate, but the biggest jumps (in followers) are during major events. The Ping incident got me a big chunk of followers. During every major incident there’s a big jump of followers.
@OUScanner is a valuable tool that shows how fast information can spread, the creator said.
“As far as revealing myself, that’s kind of ‘we’ll wait and see what happens.’ ”
For news and information in and around the Athens community, follow @OUScanner.
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