Facts.u

According to Facebook, the word “earthquake” appeared in the status updates of 3 million users within four minutes of the quake. Twitter said users were sending up to 5,500 messages (tweets) per second, which tops the peak rate immediately following the death of Osama bin Laden and was “on par with” the rate after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

Due to the significantly slower propagation of seismic waves compared to the near-speed-of-light transmission of internet traffic, some Twitter users read about the earthquake seconds before feeling the tremors. For example, Twitter users in such cities as New York City and Boston reported reading tweets about the quake from users in Washington, D.C., or Richmond, Virginia, 15 to 30 seconds before feeling the quake itself.