The response of the blogging community to the earthquake/tsunami disaster is the closest thing I’ve seen in a long time to the fulfillment of the promise of the World Wide Web. A network of people who are, by and large, strangers to one another have banded together spontaneously and without plan to provide coverage of the disaster and to facilitate relief efforts.

The Web has produced this kind of response before, but the unique characteristics of blogs—including cross-linking and trackbacks—have raised the profile of the coverage beyond what was possible with individual Web sites.

Almost as fascinating as the proliferation of blogs reporting on various aspects of the tragedy is the media coverage of the phenomenon. A quick scan of Google News this morning produced a flurry of references, including…

• The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, looks at how blogs have become the eyes and ears of the tsunami disaster
• The Age, from Austrlia, reports on bloggers who are helping families find friends and relatives
• The Times of India reports that bloggers beat the conventional media with coverage of the disaster
• The Inquirer, from the UK, also covers bloggers scooping wire services with first-hand reports out of Asia
• The Guardian, also from the UK, reports on the scope of coverage offered by blogs
• The Hindustan Times, from India, points to blogs aiding in the relief effort

It strikes me that blogs are playing this large a role at a time when many Net users still don’t know what they are. (I had a talk yesterday with a prospect—a communicator—who said he’d have to go look up the word since he was still unclear on the concept.) Once blogs have entered the mainstream, their influence during incidents such as natural disasters could be huge, particularly as agencies like the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) begin to recognize the sense in tapping into the blogosphere to coordinate efforts.

Meanwhile, Lee LeFever reports that one blogger who set up a blog to support relief efforts but wonders if a wiki might not have been a better approach.

I know the folks at SeedWiki can hook a wiki into an existing Movable Type or Blogger blog. In this case, you can post a blog post and make a word in the post a link to a wiki page. In this way, Dina could continue the time-sensitive blog posts, but at the same time point the community to wiki pages where they can contribute content.