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When breaking news is happening, you may find the news before the media if you Tweet. With our technology and social media readily available on our cell phones, breaking news is tweeted as it happens.

Today, a devastating 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile, shattering bridges, collapsing buildings, overturning cars, and taking the lives of what may be hundreds. Over 2,000 tweets per minute appeared on Twitter when the earthquake began.

Twitter is a powerful micro-blogging website, that may be the fastest source of getting breaking news, out there. It is not always dependable, but it is definitely viral. Within an hour of the earthquake, Chile was the number one trending topic and talked about issue on Twitter.

Micro-bloggers are obtaining breaking news first, through these eye catching tweets, but are unable to access news stories or other official information for sometimes up to an hour.

Tweeters are usually very happy to spread the word. You get the news first, and then wait for the rest of the story to unfold. This morning, if you were the first one to hear, all you could do was sit and wait for more news to follow.

Twitter may not always have the most accurate information. It’s almost like a game of telephone once tweets are shortened from their already short 140 characters. However, it tells a true human story. Thousands of tweets were coming in and some were tweeting that they were scared for their life. Photos were already being shared and conversation has erupted.

Twitter does not compete with traditional written news like a blog may. Twitter works as a news distribution platform because it is fast, open to anyone, easy to use and acts as a two-way communication tool. A great user to follow for breaking news updates is @BreakingNews. Today they have almost 1.7 million followers and they often break news stories before the main stream press.

If there is breaking news out there, we will tweet it as it happens!