It's not just wide public discussion, when there's some large local event(weather, tornado, etc) I usually find the most up to date and accurate information on twitter 2-3 hours before any news site.
It's the CB radio of social media and I find huge value in that.
Yes, much better. All it takes is someone and their phone.
Take for instance the recent tornado we had off the Oregon coast. I had video/pictures/reports showing up even ahead of the local NOAA site or google news.
Similar, there was a fire around my office a week ago and within minutes there were an image on twitter. Within 30 minutes multiple ones from various angles.
Granted, it was the first time I ever went to Twitter for something like this, but I knew that it was /the/ place for the most up to date information.
And I try to avoid Twitter as much as possible, too annoying to read in there.
I know about the Eternal September, but I believe that the AOL users that "swarmed" the network were more technically apt than the generic Twitter user and also were way fewer.
The skill (and motivation) gap between using something like IRC and Twitter is massive.
For some meaning of "limited subsection of the general population".
I had 12000 followers for a twitter account about a specific football club - a specific subsection but not a technical or media one.
I used to randomly look at my followers and while many were "highly invested tech and media people" - the majority were just people who wanted to stay up to date (in particular I used to live-tweet during games which lots of people really enjoyed).
That was a few years ago though - personally I rarely use Twitter any more.
It's the CB radio of social media and I find huge value in that.