Shortly after 2:00pm today, the New York Times posted a front-page story announcing New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer was involved in an interstate prostitution ring. But if you wanted the absolute latest information, close your NYTimes.com browser window and head over to Twitter, where the news of Spitzer's scandal spread so quickly it was difficult to keep up.

Using the third-party application Tweetscan, you can search for specific phrases and see only the tweets that include your search. In the half hour between 3 and 3:30 EST, there were more than 300 tweets that mentioned Spitzer.

It's not just the news of the scandal that spread across Twitter; looking at the stream shows folks' reactions to the news and inquiries about how the story will play out. Some folks are plain disappointed, others lament that he was caught in such a typical trap.

You can also get analyses of how the scandal plays out in the 2008 election. This tweet mentions that both Spitzer and his lieutenant governor are super-delegates supporting Hillary Clinton. Another criticizes the Times' protrayal of the scandal that implies Spitzer was involved with running the ring, not just being a john.

As David All tweeted early after the scandal broke, the coverage of the Spitzer scandal shows that Twitter is indeed a utility, not just a play-thing. While it's still a bit inaccessible to read specific topics from within Twitter itself, its open API allows for applications like TweetScan to fill in the gaps.