Impact of Twitter demonstrated with news of earthquake in China

Noticed a few minutes ago news of a 7.8 earthquake in China. Didn’t get the news from CNN or the Internet, but from Twitter.

Robert Scoble, who presumably picked up word of the Earthquake via Twitter, shared the news with those of us following him on Twitter.

When I couldn’t find any news of the earthquake at CNN or Google News, I went to Tweetscan, which allows you to monitor Twitter discussion by keyword. Sure enough, plenty of news on the earthquake. Including from people in China.

And look who’s ‘Tweeting’ news of the earthquake in addition to ‘citizen tweeters,’ the New York Times and Reuters. Amazing.

Discussion on Twitter now is that the mainstream media may have first picked up word of the earthquake from Twitter before their traditional sources.

What we’re seeing in action is a breaking news world wide backbone that can disseminate news faster than anything main stream media can match. All with a crazy tool that asks ‘What are you doing now?’

Update on how news breaks:

In order to follow more Twitter feeds, people are also monitoring the word ‘earthquake’ at summize and quotably.

People at Twitter are now telling people who felt the quake to report it here.