Ethiopian Review

Earthquakes are one thing you can bet on being covered on Twitter (Twitter) first, because, quite frankly, if the ground is shaking, you’re going to tweet about it before it even registers with the USGS and long before it gets reported by the media.

That seems to be the case again today, as the third earthquake in a week has hit Japan and its surrounding islands, about an hour ago. The first user we can find that tweeted about it was Ricardo Duran of Scottsdale, AZ, who, judging from his Twitter feed, has been traveling the world, arriving in Japan yesterday.

His account of the incident: “holly cow, I AM in Japan,… earthquake, earthquake right now!” Twitter search has been running on a delay though over the past 30 minutes or so, making it difficult to get much additional information out of the service. Unfortunately, real-time is only real-time when all of the bells and whistles are working.

Interestingly, Monday’s earthquake in Japan was tweeted by none other than Solange Knowles, sister of Beyonce, who shared the news with her 250,000+ followers: “wtf! wtf! wtf! my sister said she was scared out of her mind and calling my mom and i was snoring. 6.6????? omg! omg! omg! tsunami watch???” The pair had been traveling together in Tokyo.

According to the USGS, today’s earthquake registered a magnitude of 6.7.

- by Adam Ostrow | Mashable