The Quake and Twitter

The Quake, originally uploaded by Rollofunk.

It's still a developing situation over in Japan, and aftershocks are still rocking the place. Been following the events all day on live news streams and Twitter. Actually, I got to know about the big quake pretty much as it happened, when a Tokyo friend tweeted "Earthquake, scary". I've learned that locals don't mention quakes much unless they are scary, and adding that "scary" to the tweet got me guessing it was serious even before the first richter scale numbers started coming in (official numbers now say 8.8-8.9, which is something like the 5th largest ever recorded anywhere). Twitter contacts and their re-tweets kept me better up to date than any news site ever could aspire to, plus it let me get in touch and make sure friends were safe. Seems tweets have been guiding rescuers too, after phone networks went down, and many people stranded in the Tokyo public transit system got their info and news via friends tweeting and re-tweeting important info. Just hoping the casualty numbers don't climb much anymore now.