Posted by Doug Lacombe

Credit: UN Development Programme

From the vapid and vacuous to the profound and tragic, the social web proved its mettle this week in the face of the disastrous Haitian earthquake.

The catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake decimated the impoverished Caribbean island, snuffing out tens of thousands of lives while toppling infrastructure. Miraculously, what seemed to stay up were pockets of mobile communications and the web, both of which allowed real-time news to seep out of the ruins. PR Week magazine (prweekus.com) wrote: “CNN is reporting web users are turning to tools like Twitter and blogs en masse to share and receive information on the earthquake in Haiti this week . . .”

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