I definitely agree with you. It seems that things got blown out of proportion after the face, with people amazed that Twitter was able to “beat” the USGS to news of the earthquake. These folks have no clue how the USGS and earthquake data processing work, so it gets frustrating reading different blog posts and tweets about how Twitter was superior to the USGS for information about the earthquake (you can argue that both ways really).

But yeah, Twitter does provide a nice heads up and if you are following people in the affected areas, you can get a real-time/semi real-time look at the situation.

If you notice Scoble’s first post, he specifically mentions “Off to the USGS site”. I think it shows that Twitter will not be a one stop shop for information, but rather a way to propagate news quickly and direct people to more relevant sites. At least, that’s how I’d use it… :)

I have not followed the earthquake saga on Twitter, but I would think that most of the information presented there was either repeats from the USGS site, or brief reports from the field. The first part can be taken directly at the source while the second one is to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. At least, twitter provides a nice heads up…