The other day, I took a look at how the Associated Press used Twitter to cover the Sonia Sotomayor hearings.

It was a landmark experiment for that organization, and it seems the most extensive such project, fueled by a team of eight. But live tweets during the hearings weren’t limited to the AP.

Michael Muskal of the Los Angeles Times, Maria Newman and Kate Phillips of the New York Times, and Peter Hamby of CNN all fired away tweets of their own, each with their own style.

Muskal tweeted from his @latimesmuskal account and he wrote me via e-mail about the experience.

“We are trying to explore a way to do what journalism has always done best — explanation, context, voice and personality — in a new forum, Twitter,” he wrote. ”The idea is bring those building blocks of good journalism over to an interactive platform and see if we can tell the Sotomayor story in a different and interesting way while maintaining the usual standards of truth and quality.”

Asked how his style of tweeting differed from the AP’s, he responded, “We too are giving the news, but I think we are trying to be more analytical as well.”

For example, he noted he flagged issues that didn’t come up, pointed out the politics, and showed the irony in Leahy making jokes while Franken had to stick to serious “to establish senator-type creds.”

A glance at the New York Times @thecaucus feed, updated by Newman and Phillips according to a tweet from the Times’ Social Media Editor Jennifer Preston, showed another style of tweeting.

It was almost entirely composed of quotes or paraphrases of what people were saying inside the courtroom. In a sense it told a story and allowed the reader to follow along as if they were there. It also directed people back to The Caucus blog and New York Times Web site to read more and continue the conversation.

Finally, CNN’s Twitter feed @hambypCNN was a hybrid of live tweets, analysis, and interaction with users. Hamby also posted TwitPics and shared commentary throughout the hearings.

So who was the most successful? All of the feeds were valuable in their own way. But as one way to measure (though far from perfect), here’s how many followers each account gained over the span of the coverage (July 13-17), per TwitterCounter:

@AP_Courtside +1,865
@thecaucus +375
@hambypCNN +228
@latimesmuskal +111

The account that showed the most growth was in fact the AP — the one that relied on the audience to predominantly direct coverage and interacted the most. It’s difficult to put a value on tweets, but that in itself is telling of this new age.

The Associated Press is trying something it’s never tried before with its coverage of the Sonia Sotomayor hearings.

It’s providing round-the-clock tweets at @AP_Courtside, documenting every move of the hearings, allowing the general public easy access to some of AP’s best talent, and using feedback to direct the coverage itself. And that’s not all.

The Twitter coverage is supplemented by a partnership with Yahoo News, where an extensive blog and collection of related articles is prominently featured on that Web site.

While the AP has embraced Twitter before, never before has it conducted anything of this magnitude in terms of crowdsourcing on a major story, says Gida Hammami of Editors Weblog.

I spoke with Ted Anthony, a national writer/editor for the AP and former foreign correspondent, who is supervising the ongoing Sotomayor Project.

What was the main idea behind it?

“We wanted to conduct an experiment and look at whether we could build community around news content,” he said. “It’s a short-term experiment, not a prototype or anything, but we also wanted to bring in our newspapers and increase discussion.”

Anthony said of Twitter, “It’s becoming a major force in the way people are communicating with each other.” He added that AP wanted to use it “not just because of its increasing relevance to the journalism world, but also the immediate flavor of it.”

A team of eight people is working together on the Sotomayor experiment, including seasoned political reporters, a social media expert, regional news director, and the Washington Bureau Chief himself.

“It’s true that the mainstream media and particularly AP don’t have a lot of experience dipping into the toes of readers, but we’re finding a pool of people who very much want to interact,” Anthony said.

He said not only are they collecting opinions about the story and the coverage itself, but the AP is interested in creating lively conversations between the public and journalists. It’s asked readers for the parts of the story they’re most interested in and tries at every opportunity to send reporters out to dig in.

Anthony said the group has already learned some interesting things.

“I am very delighted with the level of discourse,” he said. “Certainly, there’s skeptics and any experiment should have that, but people for the most part have been very engaging.”

“What’s becoming obvious is people very much want to have a stake in the news and how it’s covered,” he said.

For those critical of Twitter and its limitations, Anthony welcomed the criticism, but he also said he feels the negatives can be overcome:

“People may complain about these new technologies, and say it goes against depth, but we’ve proven with this experiment that if we have good reliable info, even in fragments, we assemble a picture at the end of the day that has relevance and context.”