Earthquake researchers are turning to a new tool to help them quickly gauge the location and severity of newly occurring temblors—Twitter.

The USGS has developed a prototype application to search and capture Twitter feeds that make reference to earthquakes, according to Paul Earle, at the agency’s Earthquake Information Center in Colorado. But it’s still in the beta testing mode.

Longer term plans for making use of the quake-related tweets may include publishing maps showing where they originated, but Earle says that’s still well off into the future.

Still, as the graphic below shows, there is strong evidence already available to suggest that there will be plenty of content for the USGS program to work with as soon as it is fully operational.