Twitter’s a platform. Can it also be a news outlet?

Sure.

It’s predominantly crowd-sourced, and you have to be careful where you get your information, but I don’t see any reason it can’t be.

You can find all of the following on Twitter: breaking news, pictures, features, reviews, job opportunities, great deals/coupons. Not to mention opinions, sports, news, business…see where I’m going with this?

This analogy has been made before, and I take it seriously — Twitter is like your very own newspaper, with a real-time stream of only the headlines you want to see (Jimmy Fallon said this on Larry King on April 18).

You follow what you’re interested in, the traditional media outlets you’re interested in, the blogs you’re interested in, and so on. You develop your personal feed over time. You may have several feeds, one for sports, one for news, etc. – it is possible, all you need is Tweetdeck. One feed even for family/friends. What newspaper out there currently keeps track of news of important people in your life?

It’s all real-time. I can’t tell you how many times things come up .. situations where I turn on the television, see a certain movie, go to a restaurant, attend an event, etc. .. because I read it on Twitter first. Not to mention Twitter’s helped me find wonderful professional/career and networking opportunities. And of course the many news applications.

So when the USA Today published an Associated Press article today by Jake Coyle, asking the question, “Is Twitter the news outlet for the 21st century?” — I got to say, absolutely, I think it can be.