Saturday, June 12, 2010

Twitter, Earthquakes and Its Different Now (Update)

One of the things Twitter became famous for as it became clear the micro-blogging service would be around for some time was announcing and verifying first hand accounts of earthquakes.

Visiting late Saturday (Eastern Time US), I noticed the TwitScoop box (lower right) with the now infamous Twitter trend appearing once again.  One click .. it was pretty clear ... we had an earthquake ... somewhere :


Considering the increase in activity in Twitter over the past year and the 'size' of this ongoing trend, I decided to bypass the tweets and go directly to the USGS site for more info.

Why was the trend so large, as confirmed on the Twitter front page .... and for so long?

My suspicions were confirmed.

It wasn't just California that was shakin' today.  In fact, there were more than a few that ranged into the 'tweet level' :


I suppose the next step is if you're going to help by tweeting an earthquake, either turn on your location in Twitter (in most cases Twitter will find you ... if you let them) OR simply Tweet your location.

Twitter can be an actual lifesaver during real-time events but we need to adapt as the times continue to rapidly change.

Update: Apparently we can expect 'Earthquake' to continue trending tonight: