In 1600, Shakespeare wrote one of the most famous quotations in literature: “to be, or not to be.”

Fast-forward 400 years, and Shakespeare could be typing his line on the Internet as: “to tweet, or not to tweet.”

On the surface, Twitter is a mix of social networking and micro-blogging that enables users to send and receive 140-character messages and updates known as tweets. You can tweet on Twitter using the Web, text messaging services or third-party applications. Twitter is essentially a tool that condenses our lives into haiku. Those who can turn life’s banal details into interesting tidbits garner a big audience.

The first reaction most people have to Twitter is confusion, or a fear of the unknown. Why would someone want to read short messages about what someone else is eating for dinner or watching on television?

But Twitter is much more than that. It can help you get a job, brand yourself and provide you with breaking news (and also insight into what your friends are eating for dinner).

Throughout history, new technology has usually been feared when first introduced. Socrates feared the effect that writing would have on the ability to think. The printing press arrived with fear that convenience would prompt intellectual laziness, making us study less. The calculator was feared by professors who thought students would use it so much they wouldn’t understand simple calculations. But from a long term perspective, rather than hurt us these new technologies have increased our productivity.

Like its predecessors there are also many ways you can benefit from Twitter. Twitter enables you to get quick feedback from an audience of your peers. You can ask your advice and receive instant replies from other users. These collective opinions can provide great insight and influence for projects.

Once, I asked where a good place was to eat sushi in Los Angeles. Thirty minutes later I had five responses with restaurant recommendations.

Gone are the days when we only had to worry about our identity in our immediate community; now we also have our Internet identity to manage. One of the primary benefits of Twitter is to develop your casual persona by establishing yourself as an approachable and well-connected social personality.

Twitter can be used to mold your Internet image. The Obama campaign (known on Twitter as @BarackObama) is an excellent example of this, as it used Twitter to appeal to technologically savvy voters. Town hall meetings and radio addresses may nurture our nostalgia, but Obama’s Twitter feed met our need for speed.

For serious Twitterers, there is a commerical aspect to this. Building a base of colleagues and peers could lead to possible marketing opportunities. With thousands of subscribers to your thoughts, you gain a salable asset. A penny for your thoughts becomes prospective legal tender.

With the rise of citizen journalism, Twitter is often the place for breaking news. I remember first hearing about Michael Jackson’s death from the site. Twitter has also been the leading source for coverage on the Iran elections, the Hudson plane crash, sports and movie reviews.

In the case of the Hudson plane crash, a Twitter user (@jkrums) was aboard a ferry used to rescue stranded passengers. He uploaded a breaking news photo instantly. The New York Times didn’t have the information on their Web site until 30 minutes later.

Furthermore, you can follow many famous athletes including: Shaq (@THE_REAL_SHAQ ), Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong), and Lamar Odom (@RealLamarOdom). One athlete, Miwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva (@CV31), wrote “In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We’re playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.”

Needless to say, this is a nightmare for most sports agents.

Using Twitter for its potential networking and noteworthy information ultimately provides users with a powerful media outlet, a source for recommendations and breaking news.

Something to consider, or even to tweet about later.

Michael Jackson’s death has brought out both the best and the worst in how information spreads over the Internet.

The day of the pop star’s passing, the world was able to watch the events unravel in real time, and not just from one source. En mass, people visited gossip blog TMZ for the speculated truth, CNN for the reported truth, Twitter for the mass outcry, and iTunes to download favorite MJ songs.

Within 24 hours of Jackson’s death, music icons P-Diddy, Chris Brown, Usher, Boyz2Men and others united to write, produce and mass-distribute a Michael Jackson tribute song through file-sharing site Box.net. Within just hours, social media blog Mashable reported that the song exceeded 100,000 downloads.

Google reported on its internal blog that the sudden increase in traffic caused the site to think it was under some kind of attack. Because millions of people were searching for the same terms, users received an error that said, “your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.”

The Internet was overwhelmed with a single tragedy.

We’ve seen it happen in other countries. During the Iranian elections and Mumbai attacks, millions of citizen journalists flooded the Web with information and inquiries.

But this was the first time that the United States had experienced unity online in the quest for information. All at the same time, people everywhere were seeking answers to the same questions about Jackson’s possible death.

Each event reveals that we continue to speed up how we get information — from the days of print when we were updated once a day, to TV when it was multiple times a day, to the early Web days when it was every few hours, to today’s social media outbursts when we’re updated by the second.

But is this whirlwind of light speed information good or bad? Facts spread exponentially and instantly, but misinformation spreads equally as fast.

Rumors about Jeff Goldblum, Natalie Portman and George Clooney’s death quickly started and spread across social networks in the hours following Jackson’s death — all of which were untrue.

New Zealand broadcast news picked up on the Web rumors and reported incorrectly that Goldblum had fallen off a cliff to his death — a major blow to traditional media’s credibility. Comedic pundit Stephen Colbert made a spectacle of the error by bringing Jeff Goldblum on the show to “tweet from the dead.”

If everyone is now flocking to the Web — something we’ve known and further proven through Jackson’s death— how will we create a system for verifying information? As we continue to speed up info overload on the Web, who will be the ones to confirm, organize and spread the facts?

For that, journalists should step up to the plate.

Mass news media has looked for the opportunity to save itself and this may be it. By proving that credibility and speed are the keys to success online, journalists will have to figure out what it takes to secure that trust.

When we thirst for knowledge during these moments of tragedy and uncertainty, what will it take for us to believe a “trusted” source and spread that information, rather than just becoming another voice in the wildfire?

If this event has taught traditional media anything, it is that now is the time to start becoming the masters of speed and credibility.

It’s not about what kind of slideshow you use or what kind of camera you’re shooting with or how experienced your reporters are, but who can be trusted and who can give you the news in the fastest and most convenient ways possible.

In the next 5 to 10 years, we’re going to see one of four things happen: Bloggers will become that trusted source, mass media will return to its post as the all-knowing and all-trusted, or we could continue to experience a mix of both.

A last and increasingly likely scenario is that both forms will collapse and the crowd will win out, as we saw with Mumbai and are now seeing with Jackson’s death. The millions of voices in the sea of tweets and posts will become the overpowering voice, for good or for bad.

Because so many news consumers are going to the Web for news, competition over who wins over the most readers first will be the difference between life and death for industries like newspapers and broadcast television.

We’re at a tipping point where either mass media, bloggers or the crowd will become the prevailing voice that we all turn to during these moments in history.

Who did you turn to first?

Lauren Rabaino is a journalism senior, Mustang Daily online editor and reporter.