MANILA, Philippines -- A microblogging webpage aiming to deliver news and information faster and easier was launched by INQUIRER.net on Wednesday, with the hopes of ?harnessing the power of social networking for journalism,? an official said.

INQUIRER.net Vice President and Executive Editor Leo Magno said the company?s move to use Twitter for its breaking news content was a way of ?looking at faster ways to deliver information through microblogging and social networking sites.?

Twitter is a Web 2.0 tool that allows members to microblog, or to write short, 140-character entries to share with their network of friends. Entries, known as ?tweets,? can be posted online or can be sent in the form of text message.

People used Twitter to send real-time information during the May 12 China earthquake. Victims of the quake sent ?tweets? to friends and loved ones as far as the United States and these tweets were sent ahead of official media reports. Experts also claimed that tweets from the China quake were received by people faster than reports from the US Geological Survey.

This revolution in information delivery prompted experts to comment that Twitter could become a media tool for fast news delivery.

Magno said the company hopes to use the social networking feature of Twitter to allow as many people as possible to visit the news website.

?Basically we're using a social networking platform but instead of personal use, we're applying it to media to deliver news,? he said.

For its part, INQUIRER.net has already set up two Twitter sites in the past: Tales of the Nomad (the Twitter counterpart of the travel blog) and The Pacquiao Files.

INQUIRER.net first used Twitter for Tales of the Nomad in May. Tales of the Nomad's Twitter site takes people to the places reporters visit. It leaves readers with a feeling of actually being there in the beaches of Boracay, a luxurious hotel in Batangas or the streets of Bangkok as the reporter gives real-time tweets on his or her travel adventures.

The Pacquiao Files was another Twitter site launched by INQUIRER.net to record the match of Manny Pacquiao and David Diaz for the WBC lightweight championship on June 29. The Twitter site featured minute-by-minute updates and literally a ?blow-by-blow? account of all matches, from the undercard to the Pacquiao-Diaz fight itself.

INQUIRER.net's Breaking News Twitter page was ?the next logical step after Tales of the Nomad and The Pacquiao Files,? Magno said.

But he added that the site's Twitter counterpart was different from the Breaking News section itself, because the Twitter counterpart only gave the title and the links of the story. Readers would still have to click on the link and visit the site itself to read the full story.

?The Breaking News Twitter page is a window that allows more people to see what we're doing and invite them to read our news. So the news gets delivered faster and further using social networking platforms. As for the tenets of journalism, nothing changes. [Twitter] is not supposed to replace anything. We're just providing them a window from a new platform to our Breaking News,? Magno said.

INQUIRER.net's Breaking News Twitter page is at http://twitter.com/inquirerdotnet.