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@Everyone If you want to keep up with the world, get a Twitter #nobutsrsly #peerpressure.

There’s no question that there’s been some significant upheaval in the world lately. From uprisings in Africa and the Middle East in late January, to the killing of Osama bin Laden by SEAL Team Six earlier this month, to the lack of the rapture May 21, not a day passes when there isn’t some sort of significant news of sorts from around the world. And there’s no question that Twitter has factored prominently in the broadcasting of all of these events—reporting the events in real time, concisely and at times with humor.

Take the revolutions in Egypt. Twitter users live-tweeted the political turmoil in Egypt, providing a much needed news source. #Egypt became a cry to discuss and react to the issue, trending on Twitter to such a degree that the Egyptian government attempted to ban the site.

Or, consider the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. The news was essentially broken on Twitter, as those in Abbottabad, Pakistan, realized what was going on, and tweeted the events to their followers, ultimately alerting the media. Twitter user @ReallyVirtual, an IT consultant located in Abbottabad at the time of the raid, received such a flurry of queries about the event that he, much to his chagrin, unintentionally live tweeted the entire thing. Responding to everyone from average civilians to the national media, he tweeted, “The gunfight lasted perhaps 4-5 minutes, I heard. That was around 10 hours ago. There are no other gunfights that I know of.” Later, he posted a picture of his street outside, just before the raid. Indeed, @ReallyVirtual received such a bombardment of attention that finally, frustrated, he tweeted, “Bin Laden is dead. I didn’t kill him. Please let me sleep now.”

Or, take the rapture, which was slated to occur at 6 p.m. Saturday. Although few believed the event would actually happen, the event exploded into the Twitterverse with a flurry of humorous tweets. #Myraptureplaylist and #endoftheworldconfessions trended on Twitter Friday, as people tweeted their preparations for the apocalypse. One user tweeted, “#myraptureplaylist: 1. The Final Countdown 2. The Final Countdown 3: Birthday Sex?” Another user tweeted, “#endoftheworldconfessions: I ‘let the dogs out.’ It was me.” As the proposed moment of the rapture arrived in several countries, people tweeted various happenings as the world allegedly commenced ending. In Australia, Jon Gall tweeted, “Rapture time here in Melbourne. A rather quiet sort of rapture if you ask me.” As the weekend progressed, with no earthquakes, volcanoes or people beamed to heaven, users tweeted their humorous insights, recognizing, “#thatawkwardmoment when you walk into work on Monday after you quit your job and cursed everyone out #rapture.” And, true to the fluidity of Twitter, less than 24 hours later, Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake were already trending above God and Harold Camping.

The fact is that Twitter has revolutionized news reporting. The conventional concept of news fixes itself to specific arenas: televisions, newspapers, magazines, websites. With Twitter, the arenas combine. News expands into a real time space for open dialogue, melding multiple forms of media­—pictures, videos, websites—and multiple perspectives into neatly packed, 140-characters-or-less messages, all conveniently located in your Twitter feed the moment you log in. Twitter users can read, react, reinterpret and re-share news as soon as they view it. The degree of simplicity, speed and accuracy of news reported on Twitter is one that other news outlets can only dream of achieving.

In 2009, a Pear Analytics study found that 40 percent of tweets could be described as “pointless babble.” This was probably true then, and is probably true now. The point of Twitter, however, is not the nonsense itself, but the flow of that nonsense. That is, to say, the significance of every tweet is determined not purely by its content but by the way it establishes its presence throughout the Twitterverse, through conversations and connections with other tweets, through hashtags, retweets, replies or @mentions. Take the nonsensical “sitting on the toilet” tweet: Lying unnoticed by 35 followers, it’s relatively insignificant. But if someone searched for “toilet,” found that tweet, and retweeted it to his followers, who, in turn, retweeted it to their followers, that toilet tweet’s significance rises exponentially. And if that toilet tweet were in Abbottabad, Pakistan, at the time of the SEAL Six raid, it becomes pretty important.

In short, Twitter combines the best of the Internet into one singular mission: alerting its users about the world—and each other. Twitter users are numerous. Newspapers, celebrities, athletes, companies, regular human beings and even some pets all have Twitter accounts. And it’s certainly not too late to get one. I, for one, got mine less than two months ago, and it was the best decision I ever made, even if the “babbling nonsense” portion of my tweets probably approaches a steep 80 percent. Still, in today’s fast-paced world, joining Twitter is the only way to guarantee staying completely informed about world news. Get a twitter and #getonourlevel.