What I hear you saying is...

Driving up to Menlo Park this morning, I noticed an armada of cop cars and emergency crews strung out along the CalTrain tracks. Further up, a train was at a full-stop in between stations.

I am not a heavy Twitter user, but this seemed like an ideal chance to find out what was happening locally (ala the Szechuan earthquake hype).

Indeed, a search on "caltrain" pretty much immediately summed up what I had guessed: an apparent suicide. And sadly the second in as many days.

As I scanned the results, though, I was really struck by the content of the tweets. Friends and family will laugh at my late-adoption tendencies, but I thought it's worth recording some of these observations for posterity:

1) CalTrain saturation: In less than 90 minutes, there were over 200 tweets about the accident from mostly CalTrain riders. Outside of a tech conference, you'd be hard-pressed to find that much chatter from that many people over such a localized incident. If I were in the mobile product space, I would camp my marketing team on that train or at the stations as often as possible to get customer input.

2)Better than local TV news: While the print media continues its downward spiral into obsolescence, we hear less from those in the local TV news space. I think they have much to fear from platforms like Twitter, even without full video integration.

a) This suicide was not news I *needed* to know, but I was curious. Twitter scratched that itch in real-time. No reason to remember to wait for "film at 11" tonight at home.

b) Twitter actually delivers on the promise of user generated content. The comments (below) have more color than I'd get in the same segment covered on TV.

c) Twitter actually beats TV at its own game of delivering the formulaic, staccato snippets of content that TV news has traditionally covered.

3) Local online news is also in trouble. Online news is going to have trouble keeping up. I was excited to see a Topix result via twitterfeed in the result set, but turns out it was from *yesterdays* suicide. The local ABC affiliate is doing a pretty good job, although their post was over an hour after the first report. But it lacked any insight or observation that I hadn't already gleaned from the other posts. The MercuryNews also joined the fray late, but spammed the results with 3 posts and no additional info. The Twitter stream obviates not just the TV medium, but the news team as well. I can parse my own "man on the street" impressions more efficiently.

Here are some choice bits:

The first report:
alonblue @caltrain 329 just hit something hard, stopped

The fact checker:
icoe According to Twitter search, there was the 2nd suicide on the Caltrain at Palo Alto...yep on my laptop on a bus with other irate yuppies...

Mr. Real-Time:
nbrosnahan NB #caltrain still stopped on tracks south of Cal ave. Apparently it was a suicide. Just saw a SB train slide past us.

The oblivious:
Mnkleo getting ready to take CalTrain, big cup of coffee in hand I am ready to go..CHOO, CHOO

The optimist:
pankaj The announcement on the speakers said 20-55min delay but the train in other direction just moved, so good sign. @caltrain says 10mins

The ponderous:
fureousangel Why was a pedestrian on the caltrain tracks or better question, why didn't he move.

The practical:
sares If your going to kill yourself plz jump off the golden gate. When you jump in front of caltrain it makes everyone late.

The harsh:
TinaTBone Another day another caltrain suicide. what a jerk. Stuck in menlo park grabbing oj at borrones.

The Ugly:
Mojo4Melo @simonp67 (caltrain) Ugh, damn can’t these people go do their final act somewhere’s else? LOL

The know-it-all:
eclaires1 @barrys if you followed @caltrain on twitter, you would know that it's going to be at cal ave in 10 min!

The New Guy in Town:
Marston CalTrain suicide :-/, first I've heard of so far. Hope it doesn't start to get as bad as Holland (or Japan).

Mr. Meta:
joshwolf The real-time Web is a trip... RT: @alonblue @caltrain 329 just hit something hard, stopped

Show me a finer array of commentary in real time on a breaking event.