#Earthquake

As we all know, Monday's earthquake turned out to be kinda a big deal for us East-Coast-ers. I was ironically scheduling tweets on Hootsuite for a client when the earthquake shook our 15th floor office, the entire building, and numerous cities on the East Coast. I say that was ironic because twitter ended up being our main source of news for the next hour. Initially, the thought of another terrorist attack flooded my brain as I ran down 15 fights of stairs in record time (in flip flops, no less!) Within seconds of re-gaining service outside, my co-workers were on twitter- telling us that #earthquake was trending and announcing updates on how high it ranked on the scale, who else felt the quake, and what was happening around us.

According to twitter's twitter (hah): "Within a minute of today's #earthquake, there were more than 40,000 earthquake-related Tweets. And, we hit about 5,500 Tweets per second (TPS). For context, this TPS is more than Osama Bin Laden's death & on par w/ the Japanese quake."

It's crazy how crucial this social media tool was in our panic. I can only imagine what people would have been tweeting on 9/11 if twitter had been around. What would have been trending? Would people's last words from the towers been tweets? I guess that's something we will never know..

One of the highlights of the day was coming back into the office looking at brands' twitters to see if they were taking advantage of the trending topic. Some did, tastefully, wishing everyone to safety. Others, not so much, using it to promote their brand in the wrong way. My favorite being from Elizabeth Arden spa who promoted their massage for those who were stressed about the events. Too soon? Perhapskis.

What were you doing during the EarthquakeApocolypse? Did you check twitter for updates? Facebook? TV? What were your favorite #earthquake tweets and status updates? Share below!