It has been horrible to hear the news of Japan's crippling 8.9 earthquake and the threats and aftershocks that have followed. As a Bay Area resident, earthquakes are top of mind and you just hope another "big one" will never come. Imagine the look on my face when my husband showed me the video he took from our porch of the tsunami wave that traveled from Japan and swept our city's bay a mere 14 hours later. I was in complete disbelief. A wave created from an earthquake in Japan sent all the way to California? Mother Nature has shown us again that she is not to be tested.

There have been many stories in the news about social media and the role it's played since the earthquake. Victims of the quake and families of victims have turned to social media to find loved ones, search for the missing and bring attention to further threats from nuclear power plant explosions to local fires. Without a doubt, Twitter's been a front runner in this story. The average number of tweets on a given day is around 37 million. On the day of the quake, more than 117 millions tweets hit the Web. Moreover, more than 572,000 new Twitter accounts have been created since the quake. Those numbers are staggering. 

Instances like these remind me of why I love social media. In addition to the opportunity if creates for marketers to engage in a dialogue with consumers and build relationships, it also bring us — the world — closer together. Social media has turned an incident from the other side of the world into feeling like it was in my own backyard. Now, that's pretty powerful. Show your support to victims and see what others are saying, use #HelpJapan and/or #PrayForJapan in your next tweet.