Social Media: Faster than Seismic Waves
Within minutes of the Magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck Virginia, #earthquake and “Magnitude 5.8” became trending topics in New York. From my own personal Twitter account, I saw over 50 new tweets in direct response to the earthquake, some concerned and others light-hearted.
The internet was abuzz with meta-news about this earthquake that was felt from North Carolina as far north as Canada. On Foursquare, I checked into “Earthquakepocalypse” in NYC, and received an “Epic Swarm” Badge, meaning 500 people were checked into the exact same location. Hundreds of questions about the earthquake also came up on Yahoo! Answers as people tried to find out if they were imagining things.
Bloggers took to their pages as well, with a NYC Earthquake Tumblr account up in less than 10 minutes. Others opted for photo-sharing - via yfrog and instagram.
Judging from responses online, from the humorous to the informative, social media has once again proven its own validity as the fastest news source out there. Here at Fueled, we too were able to capture a scene of the incredible destruction in our office at General Assembly. Did you feel the earthquake? Did you tweet about it? Let us know!
