Earthquake rattles east coast, NYC and foursquare

Just a few minutes ago, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck Virginia. The shock was felt all the way from South Carolina to New York City, and even further if you count the waves of tweets hurtling around the world.

Foursquare users tend to mark events like these with -pocalypse venues of all sorts. Today’s earthquake, though, broke every record there is. In less than 10 minutes from the time of the earthquake, a venue was created and more than 1,000 people checked in, sending it well past Epic Swarm status.

As I write, in fact, the number of checkins is still growing exponentially. It’s been just 20 minutes since the initial shock was felt and Earthquakepocalypse has already surpassed 3,300 checkins, destroying the number of simultaneous total checkins at a single venue — and at record speed to boot.

It shows just how popular foursquare is in New York City and how fast something viral can spread across the foursquare network, with its push notifications and direct link to Twitter. It

Initial reports — which have come mostly from Twitter, since sites like CNN haven’t even been updated yet — say the earthquake caused very little damage.

Did you feel the earthquake? What does it say about our society that our first reaction is to check in?

UPDATE (2:23 pm): The venue just hit 5,000 simultaneous checkins 27 minutes after the quake.

UPDATE (3:00 pm): It took just over 45 minutes to reach 10,000 checkins.

UPDATE (3:15 pm): And just over an hour after the earthquake, foursquare has already instituted “East Coast Earthquake Survival” bonus points. Thanks to @dwaynekilbourne for the heads up!