A lot has been said about Twitter since it inception.  From WTF? to this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and everything in between.  I must admit, at fist I was skeptical of it, gave it a try early on and was not hooked.  About a year ago, I came back to it and noticed that it had picked up a little steam, so I thought I would give it another try.  I did and have stuck with it ever since.  I have various conversations with people who did not get it or did not think that it would become main stream.  I am not saying that it is completely main stream, but it is certainly making great strides.

Today I witnessed first hand how the Twitter effect is having an impact on the main stream.  I got a tweet today from a friend of mine that stated:  “Twitter AMBER ALERT @genochurch’s 14 yr old daughter is missing http://ping.fm/SUJAl - PLEASE RETWEET”.  A few minutes later, I got this tweet from another friend:  “http://tinyurl.com/5yodvb - Missing 14-year old girl in SC area. Pass it on. (We’d all want someone to do the same for us.)”.  I immediately re-tweeted this message so all those that follow me could spread the word. 

It in a situation like this that a mechanism to get important and vital information out as quickly as possible is of the utmost importance.  Twitter provides the platform to accomplish such a thing and today it did just that.  Within 10 minutes, other major news outlets started picking up the story, but by that time it had spread throughout the Twitterverse.  In the past, the AP wire served as the vehicle to get important news and messages out, but it seems as if there was a delay associated with that.  In this day and age of citizen journalism, Twitter provides a much faster way in which to disseminate that information.

It would be great to see Twitter set up some sort of posting mechanism that public service organizations could send a message to and then Twitter could tweet it out to everyone in the Twitterverse.  Of course this suggestion is littered with the potential for abuse, but I am sure that there are certain technical hurdles not to mention process hurdles that could be put in place to cut down the possibility of abuse.  One would hope that the greater good of humanity would outweigh the possibility for abuse, but you can never be certain.

Say what you want about Twitter, but the power of the tool cannot be denied, and in situations like this, you can see how it does in fact serve the greater good.