Tweeting the Earthquake

[Legenary columnist Herb Caen (1916-1997)]

As I write this, an earthquake just shook the Bay Area. While we could feel our third-floor Ocean Beach apartment shaking, tweeters on my Twitter page were checking in: “We just had an earthquake in Half Moon Bay. I estimate about 5.0”—“Lasted a couple seconds here in Russian Hill”—“Just felt a short 4.4 earthquake in our Mill Valley office”—“at my place in lower haight. didn’t feel the quake”.

If Herb Caen, God rest his soul, were still around and writing, we wouldn’t have had a chance to read his thoughts on the quake until the following morning, his boss the Chronicle being a morning paper. Yet here we all are on Twitter and Blogger, getting the scoop and filing our stories for our handfuls (or more?) of readers.