Comment by yterdy

Twitter was useful when you didn't know the source. Keyword searches brought you everyone talking about a topic, and trending showed you topics people were talking about (and, by extension, the people talking about them). Not everything that might be significant to you is necessarily going to be discussed within your close networks or covered adequately by media-of-record.

If CNN has decided not to cover the protest happening outside your downtown office and you don't want to go up to a rowdy crowd to figure out what's going on, Twitter would (have) be(en) the place to drum up intel (with which to decide if you need to go home early that day or not).