This is neat. I can see government agencies, emergency services and public businesses deploying Twitter monitoring tools for phrases like "fire", "smoke", "traffic jam", etc.

Building such real-world monitoring services was impossible 5 years ago as hardly anyone was publishing such real time updates online, now people tweet about their cat having a shower paying by themselves for data plans, smartphone, etc. I think this is the main positive effect of "twitter revolution" - massive stream of real-time data with public digital output.

Internet is going real-time, getting closer and closer to the real world. I like it.