Social media can be a fun way to keep up with friends, play games and kill time, but it can also be a source of real-time news and a platform used to disseminate critical information during emergencies. You’d be hard pressed to read an online news article or watch a news broadcast on television without seeing social “share buttons” or hashtags used to categorize topics on networks like Twitter.

Like all forms of media, social networks include information that runs the gamut from gossip and mindless twaddle to statements from world leaders and crucial real-time updates about developing situations. The following is an interesting example of the latter.

This brief video details how major New York utility Con Edison used social media to get vital information to customers leading up to and during Hurricane Sandy. The company’s Twitter following jumped from roughly 6,000 to over 20,000 as people sought information about their power, natural gas and steam service during the historic disaster.