Who would have thought Twitter could be so useful and valuable in a crisis?
Last night's events really brought home to me how much we A) rely on the mainstream news media, and B) shouldn't. In this case, it could literally have been a life-or-death issue. Everyone who relies solely on the mainstream news media to alert them to grave threats would have been on the wrong side of the equation.
And mind you, the news outlets had almost two hours between the initial earthquake to the time when the tsunami began to it. Even with two hours of warning and the NOAA alert system, most news outlets didn't get around to warning the public until the next morning.
Meanwhile, the Twitterverse was on top of this story from the initial earthquake on. It's hard to believe something as ridiculous as Twitter could serve such a valuable purpose, but it's true.
