Twitter is obviously a huge part of people’s lives, not many of these people, but many.  I for one see it as a great medium for learning news and interacting with my “real world” friends and even finding new ones.  It’s even a great resource for marketing oneself and helping to locate new jobs as well.

Twitter is akin to email where the basis for it is ver simple, it’s a transportaion layer for information.  This information is only limited by 140 characaters.  This still leaves the layer quite open.  The idea of distributing news via Twitter is among the many ways that illustrate the powerful nature of their simple transportation layer.  Riding on top of that layer is RiotFeed which has a few dozen or so Twitter accounts where they aggregate and categorize news on various topics such as Technology, Green Living, and Trends and Culture.  They collect news from other Twitter accounts and the web and put it into a single use news feed.  I do wish they would attribute Twitter resources with the @ sign, but that’s a small gripe.  The concept and the follow through are well done.

Even with Twitter being a single access point, the plethora of clients provide for a personalized way to retrieve the news.  I’m not going to go to Facebook for news, and with a limited number of alternative facebook clients and because of Facebook’s complex user interface you really need to go to the site to get the most of it. This shows where Twitter really shines.