I woke at 2:30 AM to get a glass of water. As I walked past my office, I could hear my PC playing that oddball tone which GTalk uses to indicate that it has a received a new message over and over. It was just a few minutes after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit China over night, and Robert Scoble was twittering it in real time.
In fact, when I awoke this morning at 6 AM, twitter was jammed with comments about the earthquake. Even the BBC commented on it.
I think this may be another of those defining moments for Twitter. Just as SXSW two years ago created the first wave of awareness around twitter, this event has the potential to bring mainstream media into the twitter world.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
