What do you use Twitter for? Telling your circle of online friends what you are up to? As an alternative to email? Maybe a little bit of legal celebrity stalking? Perhaps, but if you are an Indian Twitter user the chances are you are treating it primarily as an online news source.
That is the surprising conclusion of a new survey which reveals that the majority of those asked (16%) regularly turn to tweets for their news updates. A trend which really started during the 26/11 attacks when there were nearly 1000 Tweets a minute being posted by eyewitnesses to the horrific events as they unfolded. This helped propel Twitter into the big time in India, which now has the largest number of Twitter users of any country other than US and Germany according to reports.
Of course, Twitter is used to making the news as well as distributing it. With more than 5 billion Tweets already, it is hardly surprising that Twitter is becoming a news medium in its own right.
