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starman · May 12, 2008, 01:59 PM

Twitter Beats (Wow, By 3 Minutes) The USGS With China Earthquake News

This leads to an interesting point. Is something not "news" until it's dubbed "official"? It seems like technology has gotten so fast that personal information is getting to news sources faster than "official" channels?

Dakar the Fourth · May 12, 2008, 02:03 PM

Why did everyone in that article seem to have their panties in a bunch?

turtle777 · May 12, 2008, 02:09 PM

3 minutes ?

Who freaking cares.

It's not like it prevented anything from happening.

-t

starman · May 12, 2008, 02:42 PM

Yeah, that's the point - the "traditional" media outlets are all pissy about it. I find the whole thing hilarious. Technology has given the power to the people to beat the news.

Warren Pease · May 12, 2008, 03:38 PM

It takes two minutes for seismic waves to travel 1,000 miles. Several stations are required to get an accurate location and magnitude of an earthquake. That is the information that the USGS reports and it takes a little longer.

Twitter doesn't do anything fancy other than report that there was an earthquake and where it was felt. It also can be propogated around the world within seconds.

Mastrap · May 12, 2008, 04:04 PM

News services have to verify their information before making it public. Any user on twitter (how I hate that name) can just put out whatever. Of course verification takes time.

analogika · May 12, 2008, 04:47 PM

^ Exactly.

The news station I used to work at, it was policy that every news item that came down the ticker had to be corroborated by a second agency before it could be reported, unless it came from one of our own correspondents.

Putting out unverified news that might turn out to be wrong will easily be the end of several careers.

ghporter · May 12, 2008, 05:02 PM

Did anyone twittering have a preliminary intensity for the quake? Did they have an epicenter location? The USGS provides those (preliminary data, of course) with their announcements. That takes a minute or two to collect. Then they have to make sure their announcement isn't misspelled, and that the grammar is adequate. So three minutes is, to me anyway, "no big deal."

Atomic Rooster · May 12, 2008, 07:08 PM

I would think that the US Geological Survey has to verify it while no one else has too before putting it out there.

starman · May 13, 2008, 07:12 AM

Glenn,
No reports on the intensity other than "it felt like", but this is an interesting blog post by Scoble about it, including a twitter log:

Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger � Blog Archive Twittering the earthquake in China �

ghporter · May 13, 2008, 08:02 AM

I think the fact that it took CNN and other news services almost an hour to report a quake of this magnitude AFTER the USGS had reported it is far more important than people twittering it while they were running to relative safety outdoors.

starman · May 13, 2008, 08:11 AM

I'll have to agree with you on that one, G.

BasketofPuppies · May 13, 2008, 10:50 AM

Fact checking and reporting without inserting your opinion and snarky comments are so 20th century.

turtle777 · May 13, 2008, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by BasketofPuppies

Fact checking and reporting without inserting your opinion and snarky comments are so 20th century.

I tried to respond with facts to your post, but it seems like I forgot how that works.

-t