Catshanghai

According to Danwei there was a 7.8 earthquake in Sichuan this afternoon near Chengdu, but news of the event was broken by Twitter. The Telegraph has just reported that more than 100 people have been injured, and that 4 children died when a school collapsed in Chongqing. (Monday 7:58pm).

Robert Scoble also blogged that Twitter scooped the story before the news agencies. Robert Scoble is a former Microsoft employee and celebrity tech blogger who is not renowned for his coverage of China, but the Twitter angle shows the microblogging service is really good at breaking news stories. It is ironic that Scoble’s website is in accessible from China unless you use a proxy or a feed reader.

Twitter’s API allows you to update your status from the website, your cellphone, SMS and numerous desktop clients. There were stories of cellphone service being disrupted, but the Internet continued to function, allowing people on the ground to keep us informed via Twitter updates.

I didn’t learn about the earthquake from Twitter this afternoon even though it’s always on in my Gmail window. Instead, a colleague told me about the story at the end of the school day. Her husband is a journalist for the Shanghai Daily and tremors were felt in this city a few minutes later. Wangjianshuo blogged about this too.

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Tags: Chengdu, Sichuan, earthquake, Twitter