This morning I was doing my usual multi-tasking of writing an article while keeping Twitter open to see how the conversations were going.

At 11:45 am Pacific Time, the house began to shake, and I knew I was in the middle of an earthquake! It has been a while since I felt one like this, everything in my house shook and I could hear things falling off my shelves. The bathroom cabinet contents ended up on the floor and a pile of CDs now sprawled across my livingroom in front of the bookcase where they once sat.

After the shock, I ran back to the computer and simply typed EARTHQUAKE! in Twitter.

Apparently several other Tweeters did the same and the news of the Earthquake made it around the world faster than the newswires could get the word out. MG Siegler of Venture Beat took action and reported on this phenomenon.

Check out the activity: Click here to see a summary of Earthquake related Tweets.

Now, if that doesn’t say something about the power and potential of social networking sites like Twitter…

It’s ironic that this earthquake and the Twitter response occur less than a week before my teleclass on social networking begins. I hope that this illustrates the importance of Web 2.0 and sites like Twitter. If you’d like more information on the class, click here. It will fill soon, especially after this incident!

All is back to normal here at Viva Visibility HQ and I want to thank all my friends on Twitter who so graciously shared their support and love while my nerves were thoroughly shaken.

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