Social media a lifeline after quake struck

The Haiti earthquake has launched a tsunami of sympathy, information and aid through social media such as Facebook, Flickr, Skype, YouTube and Twitter.

The lightning worldwide response will likely reinforce what aid workers have known for years: Online media effectively get vital word out, often faster than mainstream media.

"We have big presences on Twitter, Facebook, and of course on our blog," said Tom Foley, chief executive officer of the Southeastern Pennsylvania chapter of the American Red Cross, "and I know that today we've dramatically increased the number of people who check in with us through those sites."

With conventional communications either damaged or down, social media, connected via cell phone or satellite-broadband systems, took up the slack. Land-based phone lines didn't work, but the Web-based phone system Skype did, letting family, friends and news outfits reach survivors in Haiti.

In countless instances, the first word from quake-ravaged areas was a post, tweet or text message. The Lawrenceville Presbyterian church sent a group to Haiti the very day of the quake, and after hours of anxiety, the first word was a text message: "I'm ok. Can't call. I'm ok. Start the list" - the telephone tree.

Mere seconds after the quake struck at 5 p.m. Tuesday, witnesses were posting the first images on Twitpic (a photo-sharing application on Twitter), Facebook, and the photo-sharing Web site Flickr. In one YouTube video, the camerawoman pans a valley filled with rising dust; she breaks off her French narration to cry in English: "The world is coming to an end!" By midday, YouTube had more than 450 earthquake vids.

The Face of quick response

On Facebook, pages such as "Haiti Needs US and We Need Haiti" and "Haiti Earthquake" appeared within minutes of the earthquake. One page, headlined "Help Haiti Donate Now! Earthquake Disaster Relief," lists news stories, Web sites for relief agencies - and a "cheat," or technique by which users could invite all their Facebook friends, all at once, to visit the page, in effect linking hundreds of new users to a common interest. That "cheat," in turn, was sent to myriad Twitter users, who passed it along to their followers.

Roxanne Klett of Hopewell, N.J., whose family works with Christian ministries in Haiti, gets Facebook updates from her friend Edwin J. Lockett of Haiti Friendship Ministries. He lives in the hard-hit village of Petit-Goâve.