In two weeks, Larry Ellison will run track

I've mentioned how Twitter can be used to track disasters, like the #sandiegofire, and things that hopefully won't be disasters, like #openworld07.

This is an example of the former, from the earthquake in northern California this evening (collected at Mad Dog in the Fog). A brief excerpt:

twitter: andykaufman: earthquake nice shaker in the mission/noe
burtonator: WELL THAT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE…..
elatable: Huge earthquake in East Bay
mintigal: Just felt our first tremor, very slight, but like a big rig riding past
me: Track quake
twitter: You’ll now receive updates matching ‘quake’. To stop, send ‘untrack quake’.
sacca: Earthquake!!!!! Woohoo!!
me: track earthquake
twitter: (joshtynjala): Just felt my first quake. That was awesome!
You’ll now receive updates matching ‘earthquake’. To stop, send ‘untrack earthquake’.
briancaldwell: my whole building just shifted
(oscarjr): omg! did u feel the quake?
(sallypnut): Whoa. Hello, earthquake.
(krob): Earthquake in the Bay Area!
...
(trevor_m_wilson): earthquake in Berkeley
(jimgoldstein): Earthquake in SF
...
(jakeludington): Anyone else feel an earthquake in the South Bay about now?
(lloydgomez): Modesto just had an earthquake! Yikes…..
...
(Fenchurch): Whoa, violent earthquake. Not the rolling kind, but a shaky one.
...
(mpeachey): Earthquake. San mateo. Decent size. Lasted 15i20 seconds.
...
(askpang): Just had an earthquake! Not big enough to knock anything over, but big enough to make the house shake.
(bigepaz): Earthquake?
(misskaren): hmmm earthquake. guessing high 4, 4.8
...
(samuraiBSD): woah, mild quake in Oakland…anyone else feel that (if you’re in the Bay Area, that is)
...
(PamK): Rumbles of something like an earthquake here in Hillsborough, CA
(rafer): earthquake in the mission! 4.4?
...

This is just a small excerpt of all of the earthquake-related tweets that appeared earlier this evening (I was busy working on two versions of "Maybe Lean" and missed the excitement), but note that within the first set of tweets someone could start picking out the breadth of the earthquake - notice that someone felt it in Modesto - and that we were already getting magnitude guesses.

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