China Quake: Twitter to the Rescue?
From the BBC’s website this morning:
I was beginning to think Twitter - the micro-blogging service that’s all the rage amongst the technorati - was just another fad for people who want to share too much of their rather dull lives. Until this morning.
When I logged on to my desktop Twitter application (sad, I know) it was alive with Tweets about the earthquake in China (Google Map). Most of them were from the celebrated technology blogger Robert Scoble, who is famous, perhaps notorious, for receiving a Twitter message every second of the day.
He is based in California, but thousands of miles away from the quake he was providing breaking news about it, linking to sites like the BBC and the New York Times, even providing a first picture - though how authentic that is remains to be seen. He now claims that Twitter had the breaking news even before the United States Geological Survey, which provides early warnings of seismic events.
More on the Earthquake from Robert Scoble, the New York Times, the BBC, MSNBC, Blog Runner, TechMeme, and Online Journalism Blog.
Sam Churchill and Don Park run the DailyWireless.org website which summarizes the news from Community Lan and other industry related sectors with detailed updates from around the world. It is full of sausy talk, viscious rumors and tantilizing tidbits.