The impetus for this little video posted on their YouTube channel is obviously the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the east coast late last month. The quake, centered in Virginia, was felt from Washington D.C. to New York and beyond.

Although the quake was felt by many, it kind of became a joke on the internet, fueled by the contrast between the ridiculous amount of internet chatter compared to the actual damage done by the quake. Popular jokes on Twitter referenced how the west coast wouldn’t have even felt a 5.8 magnitude quake as well as the meta-effect of Twitter complaining about Twitter’s hype of the whole thing.

We dealt with a little bit of that later with the whole Hurricane Irene media coveragething. In that case, however, the event had a little more bite to back up its bark.

Anyways, check out Twitter’s video which makes reference to the fact that you really do hear about things quickly on the service:

One top YouTube commenter points out that xkcd has already published their take on the Twitter/earthquake concept –

Whats events did you first hear about via Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

According to The Weather Channel, the quake’s epicenter was in Virginia and reports claim that it was felt in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Toronto and Ottawa.

Businesses are already exploiting the quake:

Some are already making jokes at Redskins’ QB Rex Grossman’s expense:

CNN tweets that the quake was felt in Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is:

Some are blaming Obama himself for the quake:

While there have been plenty of evacuations (including at the Pentagon), we’ve yet to see any reports of damage or injury from the quake.

It’s always interesting to see the different perspectives on the weather on Twitter (probably why they just announced a new partnership with the Weather Channel).

The quake isn’t the only weather event that’s currently on Twitter’s trending topics. Hurricane Irene is also on there at the moment. More on that here.

One really interesting aspect of this whole earthquake thing is that there was also a quake in Colorado last night – the strongest in the state since the 70s, according to reports. In fact, there have been quite a few around the country in the last day. Look at this map from Intellicast:

We’ll start our overview with a link to the Google Person Finder for the sake of anyone who has friends or family in Japan.  As with earlier versions used in Chile, Haiti, and New Zealand, it’s a tool that allows individuals to look for or provide information about someone, using either partial or full names.

That should help people confirm the well-being of their loved ones, although hopefully there won’t be too much uncertainty in the first place.

Then one other thing Google’s done is post a tsunami alert on its homepage in the event anyone hasn’t received word of the threat.

As for the top Google Trends and Twitter Trends, you can see them below, and with the exception of Casey Abrams (an American Idol contestant) and Kjeld Nuis (a Dutch speedskater), they’re all connected to the earthquake and resulting tsunami.

Best wishes to everyone who’s been affected.

- I’m looking for someone
- I have information about someone

The tool can be accessed here. 

Google allows people to embed the tool on their own sites as such:

Get the code here. 

You can also add it as a Google Gadget. 

The company notes that all data entered will be available to the public, and will be viewable and usable by anyone. Also, Google does not review or verify the accuracy of the data.

At the time of this writing, Google is tracking about 4,900 records.

An official page announced, "[T]he USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and key word filtering to gather geo-located accounts of shaking.  This approach provides rapid first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location."

Of course, a few things still need to be worked out.  Alexis Madrigal noted that Dairy Queen offers a brownie earthquake dessert, and if the fast food company ever decided to give some away, the Twitter Earthquake Detector could well interpret the promotion as the apocalypse.

Also, if a devastating quake did occur, the Twitter Earthquake Detector might not pick up on anything in the immediate vicinity, as cell towers would fall and victims would have more pressing things to worry about than getting their computers back online.

Still, this is an interesting use of Twitter, and the data that’ll be gathered could prove useful.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Starts The Year With Some New Faces

> 2009 In Review – According To Twitter

> Stone Makes Several Billion Tweets Per Hour Prediction

Robert Scoble writes, "I was watching Twitter on Google Talk.  Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!!"  Then, "I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or major press started talking about it."

 Robert Scoble Used Twitter To Report Earthquake

Twitter’s ability to beat these other sources is impressive.  People value timeliness, especially when such important things are at stake, and some previously uninterested folks may check out Twitter as a result.  Entities like the BBC are attempting to embrace it, too.

Just the same, the service might not wind up with a lot of new fans.  News organizations are sure to focus most of their time and money on their own sites, and news junkies who try to follow a wider range of Twitter users will see irrelevant stuff.  ("I don’t know why I talk to jerks.  My photos have won awards and a picture I made of Reagan is still hanging in SV’s repub headqrts," Scoble tweeted before the earthquake began.)

At least Twitter remained in working order, though.  Even if its performance after the earthquake doesn’t guarantee success, another outage would hard to forgive.

On the Google LatLong Blog, Qiushuang (Autumn) Zhang writes, "Reno, Nevada has been shaking things up the past few weeks with a series of frequent earthquakes.  The Reno Gazette-Journal has been keeping tabs on the activity with a My Map they’ve put on their website."

 Google Map Of Quakes

Given how unpredictable earthquakes have historically been, any map might be considered worthless.  Only this one appears to point to something.  Zhang notes, "Looking at this map is pretty interesting, because the pattern of the earthquakes looks like it’s following a faultline.  I’ve also been keeping an eye on the action with the USGS real-time earthquakes Mapplet and Google Earth layer."

Hopefully there won’t be any more earthquakes, making this a moot point.  The development at least goes to show what a go-to resource Google has become in disasters, though, with fires, floods, and hurricanes in its past.

Also – and we probably wouldn’t point this out if the earthquakes had caused any injuries or damage – using Google Maps to cover a disaster seems like a good way for people and newspapers to get a link from Google LatLong.

Google Delves Into Volcanoes, Earthquakes

“They” are Scott Haefner and Dina Venezky, two geologists who work for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).  Haefner and Venezky explain, “The USGS monitors, assesses and issues warnings of natural hazards, including earthquakes and volcanoes. . . .  Now you can track both real-time earthquakes and volcanic activity on Google Maps using the USGS Mapplets.”

Of course, these Mapplets will be more useful to some people than to others – I don’t know of any active volcanoes in Indiana, for example – but the effort is still appreciated.  If nothing else, it’s resulted in some graphics that would go well with a Popular Science article.

Back to the USGS software, then.  “The Earthquake Mapplet plots the past week of earthquakes around the world, showing the location, time and magnitude,” write Haefner and Venezky.  “Each earthquake includes a link to the USGS earthquake website for more information . . .”

They later continue, “The Volcano Mapplet displays the latest U.S. volcano updates, showing the current level of both ground-based and aviation hazards.  Clicking on an alert icon provides a summary of the volcano update along with a link to the USGS Volcano Hazards Program website for additional details and images.”

Right.  Once again, there’s nothing wrong with run-of-the-mill, search-related stuff.  Google’s also got your back when it comes to magnitude 8.0 earthquakes, though.

Ask Wants To Talk About The Weather

“Lexington, KY Today 7:37 a.m. (EDT) Low clouds 43 F. Drizzle. Low clouds. Nippy.” That is a look at the current weather in the WebProNews home city, courtesy of Ask.com and its 7 Day Forecast available as part of a recent update.

The Ask team posted news about the latest weather-related goodies for the search engine. That 7 Day Forecast look includes a Map of Current Conditions, which can be switched from Forecast to Satellite or Doppler views.

Those views are provided by CustomWeather, Inc. Both the Satellite and Doppler maps have a Play button that can be clicked to show projected movement of weather systems.

If the National Weather Service has issued an alert for an area, as they did this morning for Lexington, the user can mouseover the alert to make it popup on the screen. The alert can be clicked to view it on a static page too.

They also added more information about earthquakes to the search engine:

Those who don’t follow earthquake activity (like me) may be surprised to see how much takes place on a daily basis. Ask’s feature showed 18 quakes of varying magnitude took place on September 28th, with several of them shaking up locations in Alaska, California, Maine, New Mexico, and Utah, as well as overseas.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.