How The Birmingham Post scooped the world - with a Twitter

Twitter is the current under-the-radar 'killer' web application that everyone in the know is certain is The Next Big Thing online.

The thing is, no-one can quite pin down exactly what it is - or what it's for - or what it will become.

Is that clear enough for you?

At its most basic, it's a way of sending SMS-like messages over the internet, and sharing them with anyone who decides to 'follow' you. But it's this simplicity that makes it so powerful. It can be used by organisations with dispersed workforces to keep in touch through multiple real-time conversations.

It can be used as a simple point-and-shoot way of social networking, or discussing football, or arranging events.

Or it can be used to break news - which is where The Birmingham Post comes in.

I've been using it for a couple of months to keep in touch with colleagues and Birmingham's growing community of bloggers and social networkers who use it for daily debates on new media issues - as well as organising trips down the pub.

But some news organisations have seen its potential as a tool for publishing breaking news, and we've been toying with the idea of The Post launching such a service. But I had a chance for a live test on Wednesday evening when I used my own Twitter account to break the news of the arrest of Karren Brady and David Sullivan.

Now, I'm only followed by 30 people or so, so it's clearly not a mass communication tool - yet.

But these people are all tech-savvy, connected, mostly Birmingham-focused and in the business of sharing information and knowledge.

Consequently, a number of them followed my link to the story on the Post website, and started to talk about it on their own blogs and again through Twitter, with the effect that the Post site received an incredible number of hits as word spread.

What made it even more delicious was the fact that we - a relatively small circulation newspaper in the Midlands scooped the rest of the world's media, including TV, radio, online publishers - and on Twitter itself: look here to see how the story developed in the Twittosphere!

Where do we go from here? Well, the official Birmingham Post breaking news service will be online in a few days' time, and we will also look at separate Twitter accounts for breaking news in our different sector channels.

In the meantime, why not sign up yourself and join the conversation?

(Oh, and if you want to follow the US Democratic candidates, Hillary's here, and Barack's here)