There’s been an earthquake in China, and the Twittersphere is alive with it. I’m going to write a post on this and keep adding to it through the next hour or so. Let me know anything interesting you’ve spotted @paulbradshaw

The first interesting point is Tweetburner: its most-clicked links shared on Twitter are almost entirely about the earthquake, and show some interesting uses:

1. A Google map of the earthquake location
2. A BBC blog post about Twitter coverage of the earthquake
3. A Twitter user’s tweet about experiencing the earthquake (in Shanghai)
4. A Google translation from Chinese to English of tweets from Twitterlocal
5. The Earthquake Center’s page on the earthquake
6. CNN’s report
7. A picture which appears to be capturing the earthquake in an office
8. A Summize search for ‘earthquake’

Here is crowdsourcing without the editorial management. How quickly otherwise would a journalist have thought of using Twitterlocal with a Google translation? And how soon before someone improves it so it only pulls tweets with the word ‘earthquake’, or more specific to the region affected? (It also emphasises the need for newspapers and broadcasters to have programmers on the team who could do this quickly) Continue reading →