Twitter’s new promotion is that their service moves faster than an earthquake.

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.