Twitter Bigger Than Barack?

According to the Global Language Monitor, it is. Their recently conducted poll for the most used words of 2009 put Twitter as the number one word of the year, followed by Barack Obama and H1N1. What I find striking is the contrast between the big and the little. When people say the president's name, they generally say it in reference to large scale issues: healthcare, national security, taxes - things that affect us not only now, but for years to come. Swine flu is an international epidemic. Yet Twitter is used for the super short term: the latest breaking news, a sale or special that will only last 2 hours, a joke that is momentarily amusing. Have we experienced a paradigm shift, where the little has captured our attention more than the big, or are we simply tweeting away to distract ourselves from the larger woes of the world? What do you think accounts for the mega success of Twitter? Is it a passing trend or here to stay?