The Downtown Diner

This morning 8:29am: I log on at work in Beijing, see a posting on Twitter that something is going on at Sun's Santa Clara campus. Someone mentions the campus being "under siege". I have 4 employees visiting that campus this week and am worried about them.

8:34am: Send a query to ThinGuy via Twitter, asking what's going on in Santa Clara.

8:36am: I send an email to my employees, asking if they're all OK.

8:38am: Thin Guy tells me via Twitter it's not a big deal, someone robbed a liquor store close to the Santa Clara campus, and the police were searching the area around the Santa Clara campus.

8:42am: One of my employees responds to my mail: "We are ok. We are all together. We are still waiting for the message that it is ok for us to leave. No colleagues here know what is happening... I will drop you a message when we leave office."

8:45am: I respond via email, telling my folks what I learned from Thin Guy on Twitter. At least now they know why they're stuck in the building.

9:00am: My folks confirm that they've been cleared to leave the building.

10 hours later: I'm still in awe of the fact that I was sitting halfway around the globe and yet it was possible for me to know more about what was going on in the Santa Clara parking lot than people who were inside the building. That's the power of the web ... and Twitter ... and ThinGuy ... Amazing.