[jpindar]

I live in the US and I use Twitter to find out what is going on around me. For example, when I lose electrical power, my utility company posts updates on Twitter. My local TV stations and newspapers also post breaking news there.

[tk75x]

The only reason those services use Twitter is because that's where all the people are. I'm not saying this isn't a beneficial use case, but Twitter isn't necessary for these kinds of services. I would even go so far as to say that corporate entities using Twitter to provide their users a service (outage reports) they should pay for the privilege or be forced to set up their own notification networks.