Social media is common enough, thankfully, that it has become a tool for dealing with news in a larger context. The mere fact that people are using social media in a given situation does not make that a piece of tech news.

In the future, we may explore a question suggested by @marcariel: "How does/has the web helped or hindered (the situation in Japan)?" If you have a suggestion as to kind of coverage of events like these that you would like to see from ReadWriteWeb, please leave it in the comments.

But for the time being, here is a list of Japan Twitter users, and other resources, who may provide you with a good first-hand stream of real-time news.

@timeouttokyo The Twitter account for the Tokyo version of the weekly entertainment and event guide is focusing a lot on what's happening and what residents and visitors should do, reflecting the focus of their website.

@survivinginjapan Ashley, a Seattlite teacher and writer in Shizuoka, usually gives out expat advice. These days that advice is more urgent.

@ambassadorroos John Roos has been the U.S. ambassador to Japan since 2009. A good source for information on official U.S. actions, such as the Marines delivering a Forward Arming and Refueling Point for use in the assistance operations.

@Matt_Alt Writer Matt Alt's tweets are more analytical, giving some background into the actions of Japanese press, politicians and industry.

NHK English The English channel of Japan's most prominent television network provides text and video news updates from all over Japan.

Crisis Commons The crisis network has put together a Honshu Quake wiki.

Donating Rick has pulled together four excellent resources for those wishing to donate.

Ushahidi Crowd-sourced crisis map on the Ushahidi platform. (In Japanese.)

Google Person Finder Google's released a Japanese version of their people-finding service for anyone having difficulties getting a hold of family and friends. The Red Cross has their own, called Family Links.

WNYC News and explainers regarding the Fukushima nuclear plant from the New York-based public radio station.

This is a small sample of real-time news resources. But it's a start. We hope it's helpful.

If there is a resource you think anyone interested in the crisis in Japan ought to know about, please post it in the comments.

Epicenter graphic by NASA Goddard Photo and Video | post-tsunami Sendai photo by Official U.S. Navy Imagery | Fukushima plant photo from Wikimedia Commons

It's easy to feel helpless after such a devastating natural disaster, but social media tools have been usefully deployed over the past week. Last Tuesday we looked at how the Web mobilized straight after the quake. In this post we look at 3 specific ways that social media has stepped up to the plate, since then.

The UC Student Volunteer Army is a self-organized workforce, said to be 10,000 strong, that has been helping Christchurch people deal with the aftermath. Activities have ranged from shoveling silt, to assisting with welfare, to "visiting the hardest hit areas and providing hand-to-hand information and support."

The group was founded on September 4 last year, after the first Christchurch earthquake, by university student Sam Johnson. Its Facebook Page has been the main rallying point.

The group uses a service called GeoOP to host online forms, for people to either volunteer or ask for help. GeoOp is a web-based solution for groups to organize their mobile workers and workflow. GeoOp, a local New Zealand company, explained on its website how the UC army is using its product:

"After being approached by GeoOP to use the system at no cost, Sam and his team were able to enter in all the jobs, dispatch via SMS and update jobs, take photos and notes in the field with iPhone 4's donated by Apple and data cards donated by Vodafone, 2Degrees and Telecom."

Telling The Story via Social Media: Storify

Twitter has been a key tool in disseminating news to the world, as well as being a way for people (New Zealanders in particular) to reach out and express their feelings. While there are Twitter hashtags like #eqnz to follow, the amount of information that flows through Twitter can be overwhelming. This is where a service like Storify (our review) helps, as it filters and organizes information from Twitter and other social media platforms like Flickr.

Local New Zealand newspaper the NZ Herald has been running a Storify page, giving its readers a curated, real-time flow of news and updates. NZ Herald embedded the Storify stream in its website, under the headline "Christchurch earthquake - what they're saying." The headline is a little misleading, because the stream includes content from NZ Herald's own Twitter account. Nevertheless, Storify is a handy way to track this important story via social media sources.

Hat-tip Social Media NZ for the initial coverage of Storify.

Local NZ Web Startups Help Out

A local business community is always among the most passionate about helping out when disaster strikes. The New Zealand startup community is no exception and has pitched in with various efforts. There have been two main methods of helping:

1) Direct use of their platform or software.

Examples include GeoOp (noted above) and New Zealand's largest web service TradeMe setting up a support website to organize accommodation, transport and more. While some of these aren't social media per se, they often make use of social media tools.

2) Soliciting donations.

The widget you see to your right, from Givealittle, enables you to donate money directly to the Red Cross.

As well as donations, local businesses need our support. To that end, a blog has been set up to encourage people to buy from Christchurch businesses.

These are just some of the ways that social media has been deployed in the Christchurch earthquake response. Whether it's enabled people to help direct, as with the UC Student Volunteer Army and TradeMe, or has simply helped disseminate news and donation appeals, social media has done its bit once again in the face of tough times.

I first learned of the quake via Twitter, including tweets from people I follow who live in Christchurch. Most of the initial tweets and re-tweets were of coverage by local media: the TV, newspaper and radio networks. Soon after, a People Finder service was published by Google and social media sites like Reddit created special web pages to track the latest news. I've also been tracking my own family's updates via Facebook.

The hashtag #eqnz has been the mobilizing factor on Twitter, including prominent placement to important local Twitter accounts like @nz_quake (an unofficial account that tracks data from GeoNet) and @NZcivildefence (an official account run by the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management). There's also a more specific hashtag, #eqnzcontact, to collate information about people affected by the quake.

The website EQNZ.co.nz has a running feed from Twitter and Geonet, as well as photos and a blog. This site has graphs of earthquake data from Geonet.

Google rushed out a Person Finder application, to help people locate relatives. Update: Google Australia advises that Google.org's crisis response team now has a landing page which will be constantly updated.

Related is this wiki, for people to share information about missing people.

CrisisCommons is a non-profit website doing a wonderful job rallying resources. It points to, among other things, a crowdsourced map. Update: Chad Catacchio noted in the comments that this is not an official CrisisCommons initiative, rather it is from CrisisCamp NZ with support from CrisisCamp Santa Barbara and CrisisCamp Toronto.

You can make donations to the Red Cross.

The primary news websites in New Zealand are all frantically updating as we speak. Here are the main ones: NZ Herald, Stuff.co.nz (which is the mothership for the Christchurch and Wellington dailies), TVNZ, 3 News. The latter two are the main television networks and their websites include live streaming coverage (3 News, TVNZ). Radio NZ, the national radio service, has ongoing news and a live audio stream. An alternative is Radio Live's audio stream.

If you want to track the news and reactions outside of Twitter and the mainstream news websites, Reddit has a special aggregation page up. This information page is particularly good (hat-tip @JaredNeilsen)

Images from Twitter are being aggregated on Hashalbum.

Please add more resources that you know of to the comments. At time of publishing, 5.45pm NZ, a state of emergency has just been declared in Christchurch. Our thoughts are with the people of Christchurch.

Updates:

Ed Borasky comments: "Kate Starbird at University of Colorado Boulder has activated the Tweak-the-Tweet system as well. Follow @kate30_dev and @katestarbird." As Ed explained in a post, Tweak-the-Tweet aims to provide a "standardized syntax for Twitter communications." Here is the Volunteer spreadsheet & map (thanks @Org9).

A Facebook page has been created to support the people of Christchurch (thanks Rachel Cunliffe for that tip). Further update: This Facebook Page has gathered more momentum.

Telecommunications updates can be found at this Telecom NZ web page and on Twitter. Also, Vodafone NZ advised via its Twitter account: "Do not overload phone lines with non-emergency calls, stick to TXT and short calls if you can."

Julie Starr has a comprehensive list of news and sources on The Evolving Newsroom. She also recommends the All Hazards site.

quakebeds.co.nz has information on places to find and offer accomodation for Christchurch people.

If you are a blogger, you may want to add this fund-raising widget fromGivealittle to your site. 100% of all funds donated will be contributed to the official mayoral fund. I've added one near the top of this post.

Tweet stream via EQNZ.co.nz

However, it seems that at least one organization is helping Web users make their time and clicks count for a good cause, and I've never been happier to eat my words. The Haiti Earthquake Support Center, a project from The Extraordinaires (more on that later), allows users to make possible matches between submitted photos of missing persons and photos of Haitians post-earthquake.

The premise of The Extraordinaires is revolutionary but simple. Organizations can create missions. Users can complete micro-tasks from their mobile devices or computers toward those missions. Currently, the site has around 50 participating organizations and about 6,000 members who have completed in excess of 35,000 micro-tasks. Missions range from mapping safe places for children to play to helping first-aid responders reduce fatalities.

For this particular mission, photos of missing people are submitted to the site. Then, users are asked to tag images captured during disaster relief efforts. These images are sometimes graphic, depicting the living and dead, the wounded and children. So far, more than 30,000 tags have been recorded. Next, users are asked to spend time deciding whether a particular tagged image matches a photo of a missing person.

To date, the site has led to only three possible matches between missing persons in Haiti and people in images captured after the Haitian earthquake. Clearly, more users are needed to make this site's mission a success.

Finally, if a family member or friend has Internet access, he or she can search for a missing person on the site using keywords that are likely to be used as image tags, such as "male" or "teenager." So far, 640 such searches have been made.

We hope that you will take a few minutes (or longer) to use this site yourself and help tag or match images. Also, if you know of similar efforts for social media users to help with disaster relief in Haiti, please let us know in the comments.

In partnership with geospatial imagery company GeoEye, Google has just released a new layer for Google Earth showing post-earthquake devastation. Haiti was first added to Google Map Maker in response to hurricanes that wreaked havoc on the country more than a year ago. Read on for before-after pictures and details.

You'll have to install the Google Earth plugin if you haven't already to see this layer.

You can download the KML layer or open the file using Google Maps.

In a post just published by Googlers Dylan Lorimer and Jessica Pfund, they write, "We hope that Google Map Maker can also play a role in disaster relief efforts...Today, we have made this Map Maker data for Haiti available to the UN in its raw form for the earthquake relief efforts. If you have any local knowledge to share, please help us continue to build a better map of Haiti with Google Map Maker."

For a list of ways you can donate money to help suffering Haitians and stay informed on Haiti-related breaking news, check out this post we published earlier today on resources, charitable organizations and news outlets.

Here is a short list of things you can do right now to get help to Haiti. Just watch out for unsolicited emails. Quite a few scammers and spammers are trying to profit from this catastrophe and have set up fake donation sites and are running phishing scams.

As Twitter's Evan Williams just noted on the official Twitter blog, giving money to relief organizations has never been easier. All you need is your phone.

• The American Red Cross allows anyone in the U.S. to text HAITI to 90999 as an easy way to donate $10 to the recovery effort. The money is billed to your mobile phone account. According to the latest tally, the Red Cross has already raised over $800,000 through text messages.
• Musician Wyclef Jean's Haiti-focused organization, Yele is also accepting text-message donations. To donate $5, text Yele to 501501 or visit the foundation's Web site.

Of course, all the major relief organizations also have websites and will happily accept your donations. Our friends at Mashable have compiled a good list of worthy organizations.

Update: Google also just announced a new page that allows you to donate to UNICEF and CARE by using a Google Checkout account.

Stay Informed

Here are a few Twitter lists you can follow to stay informed.

• New York Times: follows updates from organizations like the Red Cross, Catholic Relief Services and InternetHaiti.
• CNN: follows many of the same news sources as the New York Times, but also features updates from local bloggers and Twitter users.
• This local blogger is also posting regular updates.

If you know of other news sources, local bloggers or organizations, let us know in the comments.

That's something we've been seeing more and more of recently. During the California wildfires last fall, we saw Twitter and other citizen journalism tools being used by people who were on the ground in those areas scooping the mainstream press. As we noted in January, Twitter breaks the news cycle down to seconds, allowing instantaneous distribution of breaking news as it breaks -- faster even than blogs or television.

We predicted that Twitter would "become an increasingly more important point for the distribution of breaking news during 2008, to the extent that traditional journalists will begin to pay more and more attention to it the way they have to blogs." This evening's earthquake in England, which was first broken over the microblogging service, is proof positive of Twitter's value as a vehicle for news distribution.

Note: Just to drive home the point, the BBC had the story up a full 35-40 minutes after we first heard about it via Twitter. Not bad by any means, but that just further illustrates how much Twitter breaks down the news cycle.