[move-on-by]

Thank you, this is the point of my comment above. Also, many of the small announcements made by schools, police departments, parks, utilities, etc are not considered newsworthy and so Twitter or Facebook is literally the only source of that information.

[computronus]

Some of these entities - schools and utilities, I'd say - can't assume that those they serve all have internet access, so relying only on Twitter or Facebook isn't enough. My local school system, for example, issues important announcements by those means (so I hear - I'm not on either system), but also recorded voice calls and texts, to ensure the message gets out somehow.

If they post information only on Twitter ... well, it's not that important. I bet some of us lose perspective on the relative importance of messages when they are coming in from all directions.

[celticmusic]

They also do crazy things like contacting the local news, announcing it on the boards that they all have outside of their school, sending paperwork with their students, et al.

It flat out amazes me how important people think twitter is to their daily lives.