I’ve been slowly converting my circle of friends to the world of Twitter. Okay, maybe converting isn’t so much what’s going on as one-way evangelizing about social media in general, but that really puts me in the fanboy camp, so let’s pretend I didn’t let you in on that part.

I haven’t been on the microblogging bandwagon for very long, but in the year or so that I have, the world, at least as it pertains to the Internet and the people on it, has totally changed for me. At first I was a little unsure about what Twitter was, or why people would be interested in it, but now I don’t think its too big a statement to say that it’s shaping the way many people get their information.

It’s even shaping the way the news media gets their news, and by perhaps a smaller margin, how they are distributing it.

In April 2008, a student from UC-Berkeley was arrested in Egypt while he was covering an anti-government protest, and all it took was one word: “Arrested.” In an instant, people around the world knew that he had been detained. Ironically, he had learned about Twitter and begun using it only one week before his arrest. You can find more about the story here.

Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts the first photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter.

Jump forward to January 15, 2009, Twitter once again is thrust into the limelight with his “citizen journalism” coverage of the U.S. Airways flight 1549 crash into the Hudson River outside New York.  Technically, Janis Krums, who took the picture below, used a web site called TwitPic that allows you to post photos in your Twitter feed, but still. Snapping a picture with his iPhone, he captured the event and instantly shared it with the world. Even though all the plane’s passengers had been saved by the pilot’s skills, MSN still interviewed Janis on the scene. Video interview via Google.

I can only say that I am looking forward to what else this world of social media has in store, particularly these light, mobile applications that enable us to stay connected wherever we are.

I choose to tweet.

I think you should, too.

PS And of course, the video of the crash is available on YouTube.