I do like my Twitter. Last night with the Hudson crash was another example of its awesomeness, with the "filtered burbling of crowds" effect on their search page:
http://search.twitter.com -- the "bird strike" angle came out on Twitter before the UK news got it, and
jkrums' awesome photo broke immediately he snapped it on his phone and sent it to
Twitpic: He was on one of the first boats to arrive, and the shot has a lot more human drama and physical banality than the distant, later media pictures: citizen journalism at its sharpest.
Twitter's search is underrated. The main page has a list of "trending" terms, stuff that's being posted a lot - it's traditional to tag public stuff with a #: #hudson, or #mumbai, recently, so folks can see it. What you get is a rolling glom of chatter - it's very vicarious, for sure, but it's also immediate and the raggedy randomness means it's fresh too: I just learned that the Photosynth team (remember them from kite photography?) are going to make a
mega-sized photosynth of the US inauguration!). Everyone wants to be there, now in 3D :)
It's not vicarious in the way of being in the event, but like being in the front row of the crowd watching it unfold. The US elections were a lot of fun. Hurricane Ike was grim, with one Twitterer confessing in the dark into his cellphone how Tweeting was the only thing keeping him together as the windows all blew out, then signing off to save battery, before appearing again the next morning to much relief.
And it's not just big global things, of course, you can search for a friend and their chatter with their friends - it's public unless it's direct - comes up. Wittering and gossip, for sure, but we're social creatures, don't knock wittering and gossip.
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