A quake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale hit Southern California near Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. Instead of the earthquake itself however, the talk of the town appears to be the blistering speed at which news of the natural disaster spread. Indeed, Twitter "tweets"--or messages--were pouring in well before the information was up on any of the major news networks. Twitter's improved search site also was credited for making sense of the thousands of updates generated from instant citizen journalists who happened to be on the scene. I suppose this represents another feature in the cap against naysayers of Twitter. In the meantime, check out the chart showing how quickly the information spread.

For more information on this story:
- check out the Los Angeles Times article