HONG KONG - THE earthquake off the coast of Japan and the resulting tsunami has proven, yet again, how the Internet offers an information lifeline to the world in a time of crisis.
As the waves smashed into the Japanese coastline following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake 130km east in the Pacific ocean on Friday, a tsunami of images was also soon hitting the web.
Nearly five million people tuned in to video sharing site YouTube on Saturday to watch one raw, unedited video of the wave chewing away at Japan's coastline. Several other videos had notched up between three and four million hits.
Hundreds of people commented on the videos across the web and shared information, from social network giant Facebook to micro-blogging site Twitter - as well as local, Japanese language websites.
As the floodwaters subsided, worried friends and relatives leapt onto their computers to find information about people who had not been heard from since the mighty wave crashed ashore.
Google's person finder service had notched up more than 81,000 records of people leaving messages seeking information on friends and family by 0300 GMT (11am S'pore time) on Sunday. The site was updating, in English and Japanese, by the hundreds every few minutes. -- AFP
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