If a tree falls in a forest and no one Twitters it, did it happen?

One tries so hard to not give in to gnawing skepticism and a general feeling that the whole tech scene is just a bit overhyped But I Just had to comment on the reverse logic re the SoCal earthquake and Twitter being the first place it was picked up.

Its extremely hard to believe that:

(i) Twitterers were the only people sending messages out
(ii) Twitterers were the first people sending messages out.

In other words Twitter cannot get data any earlier than all the other destinations.

I recall reading similar such about forest fires awhile ago, I noted I first saw that in an email - because I happened to be on email at the time. Of course no self respecting social mediahead would ever admit to being on email, so they must have seen it on Twitter

I'd suggest a far more likely scenario is that Twitter is the first place that bloggers and other chatterati first saw it, and as they are the ones who tend to talk about it in the blogosphere echo system which consumes nearly all their attention, that's clearly where they perceive it was first reported.....

The poor old mainstream media of course are hobbled by totally unreasonable requirements such as checking and confirming facts before its broadcast, unlike a social network.

It would be interesting, however, to see when they got the first incoming. I'd be willing to bet it was at very similar times to Twitter and everyone else receiving the first texts.

Update - This is too sublime - from Valleywag the story of the lady who just had to Twitter that the earth moved for her even while her gynaecologist was prodding around. We salute her for sheer dedication to the cause, this is the Right Stuff alright!.