The Speed of Viral

We learned the speed of viral this week. This happened, people in New York read about the earthquake on Twitter before they felt it.

Seismic waves travel somewhere between 1.2 miles and 5 miles per second. New York is 204 miles from the District of Columbia. That means it took between 45 seconds and 2 minutes 45 seconds for the seismic wave to travel from DC to NYC. The tweets got mass attention quicker.

Viral can happen faster than a seismic wave. It can be faster than the speed of sound.

This is a thing to note in future presentations, internet folk.

Not that there were a ton of tweets. Not that it trended. That the SOCIAL RESPONSE to an event is now potentially FASTER THAN THE EVENT ITSELF.

Social media is gamechanging for that reason - it spits in the face of time and space as limiting factors. And nearly every gamechanging technology ignores the boundaries of one, or the other.

spiegelman