( CNN ) -- The social networking site Twitter again stole a march on traditional media when it was the first outlet to publish dramatic pictures of the Turkish Airlines crash . iReporter Laura Eekhos went to the crash site after hearing about it on TV . The area `` was swarming with people from our town , '' she said . Moments after the plane crashed at Amsterdam 's Schipol airport on Wednesday morning the news was appearing on Twitter , CNN International correspondent Errol Barnett said . `` This is a story that broke on Twitter first and continued to unfold from there . Eyewitnesses were posting comments about the shock of seeing the plane 'dive ' and amazement of passengers walking out of the wreckage , '' Barnett said . `` It was a dramatic image of a fractured plane posted on Twitter.com that was the first worldwide view of the Turkish Airlines crash . '' iReport : Send your videos , stories . Barnett said that when CNN saw the image it moved quickly to confirm with Dutch officials that a crash had happened . `` Within minutes we were reporting on the story . `` This proves that social networking sites can be a real asset in covering breaking news and gathering eyewitness accounts but the web should always be treated with extreme caution , '' Barnett said . See where the plane crashed » . `` We make a concerted effort to reach out to people posting on the Internet to verify what they say matches up with official accounts . ''
Twitter again first to break news after Turkish Airlines plane crashes . Flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam at 10:40 a.m local time . First dramatic picture of Turkey taken on Twitter .