Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform - By Evgeny Morozov | Net Effect

Sign of the times – see the full post for more context-setting

Thus, Unlike basic internet search -- which has been already been nicely used by Google to track emerging flu epidemics -- Twitter seems to have introduced too much noise into the process: as opposed to search requests which are generally motivated only by a desire to learn more about a given subject, too many Twitter conversations about swine flu seem to be motivated by desires to fit in, do what one's friends do (i.e. tweet about it) or simply gain more popularity.

Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform - By Evgeny Morozov | Net Effect