Readwriteweb reports that again twitter was a faster tool to learn about an earthquake (today in the UK) than the official new services. It really takes a while to understand the power of twitter beyond the use of following certain people or friends - ground-shaking news are the best example. The same thing happened when the last bigger tremor hit California: twitter was faster in reporting the earthquake than the US Geological Service. What is the significance? One: news will travel even faster. No longer is the gap minutes that it might take for CNN to break the news or a local station to send a news van, now we are talking seconds. And multiple people twittering independently about the same thing at the same time gives the news credibility. But I think there is also a danger for people to over-react or react to quickly to what can be mis-information or mis-perceptions.

Sabre Holdings announced yesterday that they plan to roll out a social networking product for the corporate marketplace. American Express Travel will use the product and I assume this is what Charles Petruccelli referred to at the last PhocusWright conference.

It will be interesting to see what the tool looks like when it is rolled-out, screenshots for the cubeless product from Sabre are available at cubeless.com.

As we have said for quite a while: getting recommendations from colleagues and other trusted sources can make business travel a lot easier. There is no doubt that companies will embrace tools that have been available for leisure travelers as a way to increase service, lower costs and drive compliance. It will be interesting to see how the concept of “openness” and “sharing” that is the heart of Web 2.0 will look like in an enterprise environment.