Reading current event information without a Twitter account

Did you know that you can read information that people put on Twitter, without needing to sign up for an account of your own? As Twitter shows real-time short messages from people all over the world, it’s a great resource if you want to know what’s happening right now during a local or global event. In fact, it’s sometimes more up to date than the news media. If you don’t use Twitter, you can still see messages on the website anonymously (you just won’t be able to comment or reply).

Visit http://twitter.com and you’ll see a ‘Search Twitter’ box on the main page. Ignore the Sign in and Sign up boxes, but enter what you’d like to look for and press Enter. You’ll now see a stream of constantly updating messages that contain your search words, as well as People interested in that topic. You can also click on Refine Results to include or exclude words and find messages near a certain location. Under the People results, you can click on the name of any Twitter user to see all of the public messages that they are writing, once again without needing to sign up for your own account.

As this communication medium becomes more widely-used, agencies like local government, law enforcement and weather bureaus are also ‘tweeting’ to keep the public informed. Consider checking out http://twitter.com next time there’s a major event that you’re interested in.