Twitter

Imagine, over 14 million users, who visited Twitter 99 million times last month (May 2009) to read posts tapped out with cell phones and computers. Individually, many of those 140-character “tweets” seem childish or immature but taken collectively, the stream of messages can turn Twitter into a surprisingly useful tool for solving problems and providing insights into the digital mood. By tapping into the world’s collective brain (call it a pulse of the online world), researchers of all kinds have found that if they make the effort to dig through the non serious looking comments, the live conversations offer an incisive glimpse into public opinion — and even help them shape it.

Read at Light Within