October 30, 2007 9:24 PM PDT

Magnitude 5.6 Twitterquake hits Bay Area

(Credit: USGS)

It was only because I was changing my son's diaper at 8:04 PM tonight that I wasn't online immediately after the house stopped shaking. But when it did, and I did, and the boy was asleep, and the house was checked for damage (none), and the wife was confirmed OK, what's the first thing I did? I went to the USGS Web site to see what had happened and to Twitter (via Snitter) to see how my friends were doing.

As I've written before, disasters are social, and Twitter is a great social platform for connecting people during those times. This quake was no disaster, fortunately (and if it was, it's unlikely as many people would be online and Twittering), but I've never felt so connected to my online pals as I did just a few minutes ago.

Neologism credit ("Twitterquake"): Brian Caldwell.

Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.

Topics:: Social network and groups

Tags:: earthquake,; Twitter,; USGS,; I need a drink

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