[jrm4]

But of course -- compared to what?

Twitter sounds awful in a vacuum if described like this, and indeed it does have lots of problems. But, if we are going to have very huge and influential corporate sources of information, Twitter is MUCH more defensible than e.g. MSNBC/CNN/Fox, in that its significantly more "little d" democratic. The thousands of voices available there are far better than the tiny few coming from many other sources, and because the platform is generally "open" in that we can see what others post.

I think Twitter is actually doing an excellent job, given the incredible difficulties involved with what it does, especially as compared to a Facebook, etc.