You -- the person now reading this story -- can help experts solve the mystery of what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 , which disappeared over the open sea . In fact , thousands of aspiring good Samaritans are volunteering their time to scour part of the plane 's search zone using detailed satellite images posted online by DigitalGlobe , a Colorado firm that owns one of the world 's most advanced commercial satellite networks . So many volunteers have joined the effort that the firm 's website -- with its pinpoint pictures of everything floating in the ocean -- has crashed . It is a busy week for `` crowdsourcing , '' the Internet phenomenon where information is gathered from John and Jane Q . Public -- people like you -- and from your social media postings . `` This is a real needle-in-the-haystack problem , except the haystack is in the middle of the ocean , '' Luke Barrington of DigitalGlobe told CNN affiliate KMGH . `` I will ask you to mark anything that looks interesting , any signs of wreckage or life rafts . '' DigitalGlobe 's satellite photos taken 400 miles above the Gulf of Thailand can capture a detail as small as a home plate . The challenge is finding the manpower to scour 1,235 square miles of such images on one of DigitalGlobe 's websites , Tomnod.com -- with more pictures to be posted this week from satellites above the Strait of Malacca , said Abby Van Uum , an Edelman publicist retained by DigitalGlobe . That 's where crowdsourcing comes in . Timeline of the flight . `` In many cases , the areas covered are so large , or the things we 're looking for are so hard to find , that without the help of hundreds of thousands of people online , we 'd never be able to find them , '' Barrington said . One volunteer , Mike Seberger , 43 , found a fascinating image in a matter of minutes : the silhouette in the ocean has the scale of a Boeing 777-200 , the same model of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 . His discovery can be seen on his CNN iReport page , which is also a form of crowdsourcing used by CNN . `` At first , I skipped past it , thinking , 'Nah . No way I would find anything that quickly , ' `` Seberger told CNN on Tuesday . `` But then I kept scrolling back to it and thinking to myself , 'It does resemble a plane ... . ' `` I played with the zoom on my browser a bit , and took a screenshot at 200 % , which is what I uploaded '' to CNN iReport , said Seberger , a manager of information technology in the Chicago area . But Seberger does have his doubts : `` Looking at it objectively , the shape of 'my ' object appears plane-like and the dimensions are consistent with a 777-200 . That said , I feel it is more likely to be a boat . '' Four scenarios . DigitalGlobe and the Tomnod.com website officials have yet to respond to his flagging of the curious image . `` Their site is getting slammed , apparently , because about half the time that I try to access it , I get an error page , and sometimes even though I log in , no map loads , '' Seberger said Tuesday . `` The site got slammed like healthcare.gov . '' Company officials were n't available to respond to CNN 's requests for a comment Tuesday . In response to the Malaysia Airlines plane 's disappearance , DigitalGlobe activated its subscription service to emergency managers , which provides online access to satellite images before and after the incident , the firm said on its website . The photos are used for emergency response , damage assessment and recovery . The company performed a similar `` global crowdsourcing campaign '' in November 's Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines , allowing volunteers to tag online more than 60,000 objects of interest from satellite photos . The information was forwarded to emergency responders , the firm said . The firm also tracked damage last year in the Moore , Oklahoma , tornado and the Colorado floods . In another case , the satellite imagery also helped locate the remains of two missing hikers in Peru , the affiliate reported . The firm , based in Longmont , also uses geospatial big data , which is `` information and insight taken from imagery and derived from various sources such as social media , '' the firm said . The company used the technology in satellite images of the recent Sochi Olympics in Russia and cross-referenced the photos with social media data `` to analyze overall activity , linguistic composition and mood for people around Sochi , '' the firm said . 'Phantom call ' theory dismissed .
Satellite images from Strait of Malacca will go online for crowdsourcing too . Man spots a floating plane in satellite photo , but it could be a boat too , he says . Comment: `` We 'll ask you to mark anything that looks interesting , any signs of wreckage , '' rep says .