Crenk

Twitter seems to be taking over the Internet tubes and picking up more steam as of late.  I still can’t really explain what it is to my non-tech friends, but surmise to say, if you are a blogger or an Internet tech-head, you probably use and abuse twitter.

Lately, I’ve actually been really into twitter and have been following people left and right; in return I’m getting followed.  The trouble, in my eyes, is that twitter’s search tool for finding relevant people is far from good.

Welcome to Summize.  It allows you to search, in real time, people’s tweets.  This is really cool if you are looking to meet people who tweet on topics that you are into.  I actually found out about Summize from someone who started to follow me, based on thinks I tweet about.

It’s a fast, simple site that allows you to meet and follow all kinds of new and creative people on twitter.  I’d also like to throw out an invite for everyone to follow me at, http://twitter.com/mikepanic.

Once thought as merely a novelty for geeks and tech folks, Twitter has started to take over as a means of getting information out that mainstream media (television, radio, and even major news outlets’ websites) aren’t producing when it comes to breaking news. In fact, when breaking news happens, it’s often isn’t breaking news with outlets like CNN, Fox News, or even major networks. Sure, they are subject to fact-checking and standards & practices, but with the introduction of Twitter, you’ll truly get a first-hand account from people who can easily send out a 140 character SMS message to the entire world courtesy of this web-based portal.

Several individuals have foreseen the success Twitter has had in broadcasting the news in small bits. Applications like FriendFeed, TweetScan, and even Summize have allowed followers to easily track what’s going on in the world. Take the amount of “tweets” that emerged during a media experiment conducted by Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter during the Super Bowl. The purpose of the experiment was to gauge response of the public to the different ads. Within the span of perhaps close to four hours, nearly 3,000 responses had been tracked by Terraminds. This holds a lot of potential for advertisers and creates a user-generated real-time version of Nielsen’s Net Ratings.

But when it comes to local and worldly news, Twitter has become a beacon of information. From the Chicago earthquake to the jailing of an American student in Egypt, to the disasters in Myanmar and in China and most recently in India, Twitter has been able to spread the word. Why? Because of the accessibility of communication. With power outages and limitations in other technology that hinder broadcasting of information, SMS technology has been a blessing. Just check out the different messages that have been posted just recently. Even information on the front-lines of disasters and news is found on Twitter these days.

So how do you find the latest information going on? Just log into Twitter and track the latest major event going on near you.