tweets

Iran has proven the headline prescient, even if the terminology needed tweaking: “The revolution will be Twittered.” That was the title of Tom Elko’s Sept. 9, 2008, Minnesota Independent post about how Twitter messages (technically, “tweets” that were “tweeted”) came in handy during protests outside the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Tweets — the 140-character mini-blog posts sent via Twitter — are very much of-the-moment and therefore often have a fairly short shelf-life. But in reviewing these brief dispatches sent by our reporters during the Republican National Convention, we found that, despite the 140-character restraint and the inevitable typos that result from punching in text on a cellphone while ducking teargas canisters, an RNC-only best-of list was a fitting way to capture the humor, excitement and surreal nature of last summer’s event.