By August of last year, Van Poppel had amassed 1.5 million followers--and the interest of MSNBC.

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"It came to me from a source within the U.S. government, " is all Van Poppel will say.

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Van Poppel, in turn, began posting quake bulletins, tweeting its estimated magnitude before the BBC even reported it.

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Those tweets triggered pre-set keywords on Van Poppel's Twitter pages, which alerted him via instant messaging service GoogleTalk.

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Twitter was but a year old and Van Poppel just 17 at the time, but the novel idea drew an overnight following.

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After selling the video to Reuters, Van Poppel was deluged by social media fans in other countries eager to lend a hand tweeting news.

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In early 2008, when a small earthquake rocked the U.K. town of Grimsby, Van Poppel's minions in the English countryside were jolted into action, pinging instant accounts.

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The visit was slightly surreal for Van Poppel, whose hometown in the Dutch Province of Noord-Brabant is best known for its university and a gel capsule manufacturing plant.

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