The site has two main goals: 1. to help people enhance their worldview or perspective of global events; 2. to increase dialogue about international news and make the world smaller through conversation and interaction, both on this site and on Twitter.

The philosophy behind the site is “hyperlocal gone global.” There is an emphasis on what is happening in a specific place at a specific time and looks at how people are reacting to that event(s) in the area.

Barbara Iverson recently wrote about the site–which launched at the beginning of this year–for Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits:

[Breaking Tweets] is associated with the account Twitter.com/breakingtweets, but it takes Twitter messages to a new level. The site has just added Breaking Tweets Entertainment and Breaking Tweets Sports, and will soon add Breaking Tweets Chicago…

Breaking Tweets has human editors who manually select messages for inclusion in their stories. Furthermore, the editors treat the Tweets like quotes, weaving the 140 character missives into a comprehensive story on a news topic.From a “virtual newsroom,” the team keeps connected via e-mail and online.

Last month, BeatBlogging.org’s Lily Q interviewed BreakingTweets.com founder Craig Kanalley, a journalism grad student at DePaul University (the staff listed on the Breaking Tweet’s site mostly consists of journalism students).

Kanalley tells Lily that he first got the idea for the site after he “saw the amount of people twittering about Election Day and how Twitter can serve as a place for breaking news, very personal feelings and eyewitness accounts.”

A few more snippets from Kanalley:

Tweets are great because they are short, quick and, in many ways, they are just like quotes that journalists would often use anyway. They are instantaneous and, as a result, they work well with news in general, also across a wide geographic scope.

Breaking Tweets changes the practice because it focuses on editing the Web. There is so much clutter out there but it takes it all and seeks to make sense of it. I think a well done Breaking Tweets story can be just as valuable as a longer form traditional news story on the same subject. It gives a different glimpse into the story.

See the full interview here.

Don’t let the name fool you though, Breaking Tweets is not intended to “break the news.” In a blog post, Kanalley writes, “The point of the site I put together is to chronicle the biggest news around the world each day and put a Twitter spin on it by personalizing the news through tweets.”

But the site actually did scoop the BBC and CNN last week.  Read more about that here.

Breaking Tweets logo/BreakingTweets.com

From the day Jun launched this blog, I was hooked. Posts often feature Jun interviewing another blogger about his or her blog, the blog content, personal aspirations and other topics. Jun’s concept works so well because he’s helping readers and bloggers connect beyond the text. This interests almost all blog readers, which is why the “About” page is often one of the most viewed pages on a blog.

Each time I watch one of Jun’s interviews I think about how this probably wouldn’t work as well in text. The same is basically true for almost any blogger who wants to feature an interview in a blog post. Video works better than print. Here’s why:

Conventional Q&A’s Aren’t Compelling
Bloggers love posting Q&A’s because it’s easy to create this content. You shoot off a bunch of questions to an interview subject and he or she e-mails you back. Copy, paste, publish and you’re done. The person you’ve selected to interview might be somewhat interesting and have some insightful things to say, but you’ll probably won’t elicit brilliant must-read answers by using this method.

Interviews Usually Don’t Provide New Information
Social media makes everyone more accessible, so if I had a burning question for the person you’re interviewing, I could send them a message, tweet, e-mail or IM. I’m probably less likely to schedule a video chat with someone I hardly know. But there’s a lot of non-verbal communication that goes on when you see a person on a video and that information helps you develop an impression of what the person is actually like.

Interviews are Valuable as Part of a Larger Undertaking
Text interviews are much more compelling to read with analysis, context and responses. Perhaps your interview subject gave you an interesting answer, you’re much more likely to write memorable content if you provide even more than just that interesting answer. Did someone contradict that answer? Why is it interesting or unusual? Interviews in the context of an article are more interesting than if they stand alone.

Sure, other factors are involved in making the content compelling. Jun basically started the blog with a pre-existing community because most (if not all) of the featured bloggers are from the Gen. Y / BrazenCareerist.com community, so there’s a pre-existing curiosity about learning more about people whose names you recognize. Chuck Westbrook’s experience also highlights the importance of community. Chuck recently refocused his blog project and openly blogged about what was working and what wasn’t, commenters pointed out that the bloggers Chuck profiled didn’t have a lot in common–the community ties were weak.

Of course, it also goes without saying that some people come across a lot better in print that on video. But for those who can pull it off, video wins hands down when it comes to interviews.