Robot Monkeys

So at lunch today, I see on the television “BREAKING NEWS.” Apparently Los Angeles experienced 5.4 earthquake. BFD. First off, it’s fucking California. Earthquakes are common. Second, it’s a freakin’ 5.4. That’s nothing. Hell, I didn’t even notice the 5.4 the Bay got back in October. Of course, since it’s LA, the MSM goes all in a dither with saturation coverage and fear mongering. Such as this from MSNBC:

A strong earthquake shook Southern California on Tuesday, causing buildings to sway and triggering some precautionary evacuations. There were no immediate reports of major damage or serious injuries.

The 5.4-magnitude quake — considered moderate — was felt about 11:42 a.m. from Los Angeles to San Diego, and as far east as Las Vegas, 230 miles away. Nearly 30 aftershocks quickly followed, the largest estimated at 3.8.

Now the only thing sadder than the MSN filling their empty midday coverage with random people from the USGS saying that earthquakes are common in California, and that damage is expected to be very minor, if at all, is the Twitter crowd patting themselves on the back.

MG Siegler says, “SoCal earthquake a powerful reminder of Twitter’s potential.” To which I say, “Bull-fucking-shit.” He hangs his argument on the fact that Twitter was “very fast at disseminating information” about the quake. This information includes the very first tweet, which reads in it’s entirety: “earthquake”. Wow. Hell, my TremmorSkimmer dashboard app can not only do that, but also tell me more information like how strong it was, and where the epicenter was (both in latitude longitude, but also in depth). The tweet “earthquake” conveys very little information. Twitter itself gets on the self-congratulatory (and no doubt a bit self-conscious about whining how they’re actually useful, and not just about broadcasting banality in realtime) about how twitter broke the earthquake story some nine minutes before the AP. Of course, the tweets in this time period are simply on the level of “ZOMGZ! Earthquake!” and “Did you feel an earthquake?” “Didn’t feel an earthquake” and crap like that. The AP story comparatively is more information rich. It lists the information that TerrorSkimmer gives.

This is not a win Twitter. You didn’t change the game at all.