xkcd:
Sune Lehmann, Alan Mislove, Yong-Yeol Ahn, and Chloe Kliman-Silver:
Their blog post is here. Hat tip to Kevin Collins.
Twitter Is Faster than an Earthquake
Sune Lehmann, Alan Mislove, Yong-Yeol Ahn, and Chloe Kliman-Silver:
Previous post: More on Ron Paul’s Media Coverage
Next post: Who’s on the web? And where are they?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Nothing special about Twitter or the internet. Phone calls and radio are faster than earthquakes too.
Most people do not have radio transmitters and those who do will have protocols about how information is vetted before being aired. Phones are both connection-oriented and point-to-point. Twitter is not connection-oriented (at the application level for people who already logged in) and broadcast. That really is a substantial difference.
William:
I was just objecting to the pop-science gee-whiz, wow, twitter-is-faster-than-an-earthquake thing. But, yes, I agree with you that twitter etc. offer new modes of communication.
Probably 50% of the Tweets come from hand-held radios. We call them “cell-phones,” but that doesn’t change what they really are, just as calling a calf’s tail a leg, does not make a five-legged calf.
No surprise here. Earthquakes propagate through rock very quickly, but any communication based on electricity and radio waves travels at the speed of light (minus traffic issues and relay times).