Twitter being use to track earthquakes

[morestar]

So last night I was watching the discovery channel (Daily Planet) and near the end of the episode they had a little segment describing how the USGS (USGS Earthquake Hazards Program) is using Twitter to track earth quakes.

Apparently when recent earthquakes have happened, Tweets on Twitter spiked directly after an earthquake.

Here are two links on the subject of the USGS using Twitter to help track earthquakes:

USGS CoreCast: Shaking and Tweeting: The USGS Twitter Earthquake Detection Program

USGS uses Twitter to track earthquakes - 12/14/09 - San Francisco News - abc7news.com

...and once again, I retract my statements about Twitter being for Twits! It seems Twitter is getting stronger and stronger and being put to good use just as long as people don't spam it!

[mjtaylor]

Interesting, thanks for the articles. Glad you are coming around on Twitter ... you know, spam doesn't matter so much since it's easy to unfollow someone ...

[morestar]

This is true (spam). I'm kind of wondering what Google will do, if anything in the future regarding this information (earthquakes and other natural disasters)...will they?

I don't know exactly what technology would be needed but seeing that Twitter is being used and Google now displays RTSRs (real time search results) maybe Google can come up with something similar or better...

[mjtaylor]

Trust Google to come up with something better.

[cw1865]

Interesting, but I am not sure why they wouldn't just rely on the seismograph stations?

[thersey]

Right, but it's the USGS itself that wants the data faster... so if they were to watch a tweeter that tracked themselves, it wouldn't be any faster.

[JaceR]

Interesting, but I am not sure why they wouldn't just rely on the seismograph stations?

That is exactly what I am wondering too... Anyhoo, everybody raves about twitter and I still wonder why... I use it myself but just for marketing purposes (because everybody does), but dunno, if I would be a "normal" person, not wanting to sell something to someone (indirectly of course) would I really use it? Don't think so.

[innominds]

I don't think Google will develop a competitor for TWITTER.
Twitter is definitely unique.

[JaceR]

One never knows what Daddy Google has in his hat...

[sudha12]

As with the earthquake in Haiti, social-media tools such as Twitter and other web-based resources have been a key source of information about the disaster, helping family members find out about their loved ones as well as letting authorities know where there are problems that need to be dealt with. We’ve collected some of the places you can look for further data and in-person reports, as well as ways of helping Chile recover from the quake.


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