Do too many tweets make a tw*t?

Twitter has a bad name. Literally.

It suggests that it is an outlet for the dreary majority to publish trivial information, rapidly and incessantly.

Generally speaking, that’s exactly what Twitter is. 99 percent of tweets are 140-character brainfarts, written by a worldwide army of idiots. It is entirely possible that the reason microblogging services like Twitter are blocked in China and Iran is not because they fuel political unrest, but because they expose an embarrassingly asinine population.

Perhaps more laughable, though, are the cynics. The chortling enemy of all popular phenomena, they dismiss Twitter with the same fearsome wit with which they dismissed Facebook, smartphones, velcro and democracy. Carrying the dual stigma of being both a popular trend and a blog, Twitter is shown no mercy amongst pooh-poohers.

Meanwhile, the world’s broadest, fastest information service ticks on. It’s no coincidence that every news outlet and commentator worth reading is on Twitter, and there is a direct positive correlation between quality and activity, with agencies like the BBC and The New York Times maintaining multiple feeds. Information spreads at an incredible pace, with popular tweets being quickly re-posted on users’ personal accounts using the "re-tweet" function.

For those who fear the idea of being backward, Twitter is a godsend. In five minutes of a user’s time, a baffling cacophony of information from around the globe can be separated with a good degree of efficiency into that which is essential, and that which isn’t, and then digested. Applications like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck make the process even faster.

However, any single piece of news is inevitably far more complicated than can be explained in 140 characters. The danger of Twitter-reporting is that, more so than in conventional journalism, the pressure to get the scoop can result in the dissemination of incomplete or misleading information, perhaps less useful and probably more dangerous than the mire of vacuous musings from which it was plucked. Twitter is shaping the future of reporting, but its reputation relies on the good sense of those using it.

Whilst whether or not "the revolution will be twittered" remains to be seen, it is certain that microblogging is growing quickly and irreversibly. Twitter provides rapid, raw information to all those who desire it, free of charge. Snort at Twitterers if you like, but bear in mind that their retaliation may be re-tweeted faster than you can keep up with.