[aaronpeck]

I think if you just look at the shear number of followers mainstream (i.e. CNN) and alt (Vice) news accounts have or the same for financial news accounts, it becomes pretty obvious that a huge number of Twitter users rely on it for REALLY important information. I don't look at customized Feedly or Flipboard type aggregators anymore, and why would I? The information I get from who I follow on Twitter is available sooner, is summarized and usually has the option to dive deeper. While we can see that celebrities have huge follower counts, because their accounts are often water down by third parties, it seems logical that people follow them as a way to just say they 'like' them and not as a source of important information.