There seems to be a lot of buzz that goes through peaks and valleys around Twitter. Initially my instincts told me that the Twitter world was not for me– I’m inherently much too private of a person to perpetually answer the question of “what are you doing?”. But for whatever reason, I started to enjoy the wonkeyness of being part of the Twitter community, most especially, last Friday when I experienced my first earthquake since moving to SF.

As many of you know, I have a tendency to do relatively crazy things like move across the country (several times), find myself in adventurous scenarios that leave friends and family (and me) wondering how the heck I got there, and to live in cities where I don’t know many people (if anyone). So to the latter point, as I’ve mentioned before, I recently moved to San Francisco knowing only one (fabulous) friend and her (fabulous) husband.

So, on Friday evening when I experienced my first SF earthquake, I quickly turned on the news to see where it measured on the richter scale (having nothing to compare it to), and to see what others were saying/experiencing. And what they were saying was…nothing. Apparently, this lag-time that it takes for stories to hit the news has become unacceptable in the digital universe that I have become accustomed to, so there was only one logical (in my Friday-after-a-long-week state of mind) thing to do…

Go to Twitter.

There I found a whole slew of people buzzing about the earthquake within seconds of it happening, asking if others have felt it, predicting the size (3.5? 4.0?), and complaining about missing it.

Twitter-earthquake

Now, I do have to say that I “know” some of my Twitter peeps, but a lot of them I don’t. And strangely, when something (like an earthquake) happens, it feels good to know that, while I may not have people I can dial-up and discuss city-specific happenings with, there is a community of people experiencing and expressing how they feel about that very same thing.

So, thanks, Twitterville. Thanks for helping me feel a bit more at home in this new city full of strangers.