Twitter is fast becoming the best source of “What’s Happening?” in any given area, on any given day. If you are one of those people who thinks it is “silly” to record “What are you doing?”, think about it from the perspective that you might be doing what someone else would consider doing, if they knew it was happening.

You become the “news” source for local events, when you report your whereabouts at a local event. You become the restaurant critic when you tweet from a local restaurant about the food and service.

Like it or not, the collective “we” values real information from people on the street, having the experience and noting that experience in “real time”.

So what IS happening in Seattle? Twitter has a “search box” into which I will now put the word “Seattle” and this is what we learn:

@MyWashingtonSt tells us “The Bite of Seattle” Open til 9pm tonight!! Premier Food Fest FREE ADMISSION www.biteofseattle.com

Now that we know that there is an event today called The Bite of Seattle and that it is open until 9 p.m., we might want to know if it is “worth” going to? What do people who are actually there have to say about their experience?

To dig deeper into real time info on the event, change the words on the search box to the event title. In this case I change “Seattle” to “Bite of Seattle” and find:

@Mr10K: We will be reporting to you live from the bite of seattle today people. The Neema taste tests will show no mercy on any booths today!

Maybe you and Mr10K don’t have the same tastes in food, but at least you know you can get a “merciless” review of the booth offerings by him throughout the day, so you can try to hit the “best” booths when you head out to “Bite of Seattle” later today before 9 p.m.

“Using Twitter” is not simply about telling people what you are doing at any given moment. It’s a huge and growing way for people to get the news THEY want at any given moment in time, and pretty much just about any where.

Using Twitter is not all about “I have an appointment at 2 to show a house in Bellevue” from @ARDELLd 🙂 It’s a way for people to use search terms to help them get a glimpse at what other people are doing, that they themselves might like to join.

Twitter has become my news source. Twitter reported that Michael Jackson passed, before CNN could “confirm” that. Twitter told me that Walter Cronkite passed away. Twitter told me that I could catch a radio show with Jeff Turner @respres, 5 minutes before it aired so I could turn on the audio while continuing to work.

Twitter can make you more productive and keep you on top of everything that is happening. You can control how much or how little “noise” you want, by limiting the people and news sources that you choose to follow, or by using a “sort” application like TweetDeck (just one of many).

The search box opens a door to over 2,700,000 people talking about…and you choose which topics are of interest to you, when you pick a search term.

If you have never, ever been to Twitter and have decided you are not going to…it may be time for you to think about why…and what that says about you vs. Twitter.