"It's a tool like we've seen cell phones become a tool in reporting," says Susannah Fox, an associate director at the Pew project and a co-author of the report. "Back in the day, people would snap a picture because they were on the scene. [Now] there's a proliferation of ways to capture what's happening and to broadcast what's happening. The velocity of this kind of sharing is speeding up. It's not a new phenomenon, just more widespread."

That said, many Twitter users embrace the technology as a way of feeling "ambient intimacy," Fox says, just as people share the details of their lives with those far away via the telephone, email and blogging. "What's new about it is the ability to communicate with so many people at once. What's not new about it is you can create niche audiences just like we've been able to with blogs, with listserves back in the day. Twitter and status updating in general is another link in the chain of what we've been seeing the last 10 years."

Read More