Twittering the earthquake in China

Here’s a little bit of communications heresy for you guys who seem to get high on the stuff:

Does it matter?
Not that there was an earthquake, but that you should know about it faster than anyone else.
What difference does it make?
For you, and (more importantly) for the people affected.

I suspect that being constantly bombarded with news about which we can do nothing just makes us more apathetic – even for the things about which we *could* do something.

If anybody is near the quake, perhaps you could do me a favor.

One of the problems that survivors now start facing is acute kidney failure–from dehydration plus crush injury (rhabdomyolysis). The treatment is i.v. hydration, which works well at least half the time.

For the survivors whose kidneys have already failed–who have no urine output despite lots of i.v. fluids–my company has something to offer. We’ve been issued a patent for treating acute kidney failure without having to use dialysis. We use a generic medication instead, which is given i.v. It may be that oral tablets will work as well.

I don’t know how practical this request is, but if you could somehow try to get word to those taking care of survivors of the quake to contact me at http://www.genomed.com, I’d be happy to share our “recipe” for acute kidney failure with them.

Best regards,
Dave Moskowitz MD
CEO & Chief Medical Officer
GenoMed, Inc.
Ticker symbol: GMED (on Pink Sheets)
“The public health company(tm)”

If anybody is near the quake, perhaps you could do me a favor.

One of the problems that survivors now start facing is acute kidney failure–from dehydration plus crush injury (rhabdomyolysis). The treatment is i.v. hydration, which works well at least half the time.

For the survivors whose kidneys have already failed–who have no urine output despite lots of i.v. fluids–my company has something to offer. We’ve been issued a patent for treating acute kidney failure without having to use dialysis. We use a generic medication instead, which is given i.v. It may be that oral tablets will work as well.

I don’t know how practical this request is, but if you could somehow try to get word to those taking care of survivors of the quake to contact me at http://www.genomed.com, I’d be happy to share our “recipe” for acute kidney failure with them.

Best regards,
Dave Moskowitz MD
CEO & Chief Medical Officer
GenoMed, Inc.
Ticker symbol: GMED (on Pink Sheets)
“The public health company(tm)”

Brian, I love your posts and usually agree with you, but I think this goes too far in praising the speed with which a Tweet travels while not examining the quality, accuracy, and above all the value of the message.

First, I’m sure someone phoned someone at some point to report the quake. Before we talk about Twitter beating USGS, we might want to talk about how valuable Twitter is versus a phone — or yelling.

The quake probably did end up as a tweet before USGS got it. In addition to being a bureaucratic agency, USGS has to confirm and make sense of what it reports. It has a reputation and can’t go willy-nilly throwing out 140 character outbursts without doing due-diligence. It doesn’t surprise me that the twittersphere was alive with posts. But how valuable are those posts really? I’m guessing most of the posts were “OMG something is happening…” Even if you had anything valuable to share, you only had 140 characters, so good luck being articulate. There’s nothing actionable there, and any officials paying attention to the wrong people might miss some valuable, life-saving information. That’s not even touching the argument that Twitter is so cluttered and fragmented that anything potentially valuable is going to be buried; anytime something actually happens, Twitter turns into the online version of a mass-panic, so you’ll have even more tweets by people who also don’t know what’s going on. In that way, the lack of actionable information and chaos on Twitter probably ressembled the street-level frenzy in China.

Twitter works well for people at the top of the pyramid like you, but you may even feel less comfortable if the service is adopted too wildly. Right now, gurus like you are the loud voices in a big auditorium with a lot of empty seats. If mass adoption takes over, the authoritative voices may get drowned out, and with that the utility of the tool as a great connector may diminish.

I’ve been spending less and less time on Twitter and can say I’m better for it. It’s a great tool for people who can afford to spend all day on it, and I’m glad some of you can and report on your dialogues, but I can’t (if everyone spent all day on it, our world would grind to a halt). If something remarkable happens, I know you guys will hash it out and put the conversation together in a coherent blog post so that I don’t have to read 600 tweets to get the 2 pieces of valuable information out of it.

I should caveat all of this by saying I’m still a big Twitter skeptic. There is a lot of fascinating interaction and communication going on in the Twitter community, and that there is an exciting future for this kind of on-everywhere short communication, I also don’t believe that Twitter is the company to take it to the next level. But that’s another conversation about technology.

really sad when I got to know this news. over 10k ppl dead. Can’t imagine what will happen to Olympipc if this happen in beijing.

The good news China is accepting aid. Burma is not. Please write a post titled “Help Burma Now!” Here is why: Help Burma Now!

15000 people dead, 30000+ still buried alive, and all you can come up with is that you are faster than USGS by 3 minutes and CNN by an hour? No word about the people that are suffering, no link to redcross or other donation websites. Do you realize how cold and cruel this makes you look?

you, Robert Scoble, should better donate some of your own money (im not talking about sponsorhip money, you would raise and by that creating even more publicity for yourself and twitter) instead of abusing such a tragedy for promoting yourself and a product, that for 99,99% of humanity is completely useless. none of the tweets from western twitterers in the sichuan area reported of any casualties after the quake. the people really affected by the quake are so poor that most of them cant even afford a mobile phone, let a lone internet. it was on official media to report the actual devastating death toll numbers. you spoiled it nerds should all take a break and do something for those (all around the world) who really are in need for “innovative” (=live saving) services

Joe Jamin: do you realize how much of an idiot your comment makes you look? We were already talking about those things on my Twitter account. Geesh. Like there’s ANYONE in the planet who isn’t aware now that there was severe suffering in the aftermath of this quake. But two hours after the quake? We had no idea (I was even getting crap from other people for saying that there would be massive casualties).

why did so many people die in the china earth quake?

I am deeply saddened by the loss of life due to the earthquake in China. May their souls rest in peace. Survivors need urgent medical attention, food, clothing, shelter etc. We need to help the survivors in every possible way.

Twitter got the story but weeping is NOT all we can do. In fact, many have already begun to take action. See www.http://chinaquake.zhan.cn.yahoo.com to learn about the nonprofit organization Chinese Earthquake Fund. This initiative, spearheaded by Shou-Ching Tang, MD, Director of Hematology/Oncology at Denver Health in Denver, CO, has been established to raise funds for medical supplies for West China Hospital in Chengdu. It is located 60 miles from the epicenter and is treating 1200 seariously injured victims, more than half need secondary surgery. You can find out how to donate money at the aforementioned website. Thanks for doing more than weeping for the victims of this devastating earthquake.

nice post for Earthquake Facts