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Does Management Today’s editor, Matthew Gwyther, have seriously Luddite tendencies or an incisive point when it comes to Twitter? 

Aside from believing Twitter is a “tedious fad we would do well to pull the plug on”, he was singularly unimpressed with its use by news organisations as way of reporting the G20 shenanigans in the City of London last week. He called it “an unwholesome mess”, yearning for a return to “day-after-the-event” news consumption of a “page of newsprint”. Well, while Management Today lives on in hard copy, the printed news product is under increasing pressure and traditional news sources are looking more and more to the web.

And despite Gwyther’s misgivings, the Guardian’s first real foray into front line reporting via Twitter was felt by Janine Gibson, editor of guardian.co.uk to have been a resounding success, as she recounts in the publication’s latest media podcast. The beauty of using Twitter to report, she mentions, is being able to show the many strands of a story that don’t necessarily evolve in a linear fashion. After all, the G20 protests were no more or less about smashed windows than they were about peaceful demonstration - they were many things at once, and - to steal Gwyther’s phrase - Twitter was able to help convey the messiness of that.

EConsultancy’s Chris Lake, despite being a self-confessed “Internet fiend”, takes a phlegmatic view of Gwyther’s dismissal of Twitter: “Some things just don’t work so well on Twitter, which is obviously limited by 140 characters and is no place to tell a story”. But he draws a useful parallel with the Sky News coverage, which was lo-fi to say the least.

As one of the comments posted on the Management Today blog post points out, Twitter could well be a fad; but the parent that spawned it - social media - seems very much “here to stay”.

UPDATE #2: The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones blogs his thoughts on the use of social networks - or not - at the G20 protests.

UPDATE: Guardian Online photogallery captures the drama of today’s #G20 protests in London. 

The G20 summit kicks off (so to speak) in London today and Sky News has reporters using that latest craze, Twitter - the future of Guardian newspaper publishing, ho ho  - to send dispatches from the front line.

Apart from the frisson caused by French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, threatening - as the Mirror puts it - to “flounce” out of the summit if he doesn’t see tougher banking regulation, what have other protestors got lined up for the summit, and how will it sit with the armchair public not pitching tents or painting their faces in London today?

The G20 Meltdown group, whose leaders are described with lurid delight by the Daily Telegraph has positioned itself in a way reminiscent of the Poll Tax protest in 1990, with the call of “Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay” and “We’re taking to the streets”.The Poll Tax demo marked one of the most violent public demonstrations the capital had seen “for a century”, but the action undoubtedly hastened the demise of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and the abolition of the tax itself.

But will effigies of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, calls for “a very English revolution” in the spirit of 1649 and the “overthrow of capitalism” have a resonance today? As angry as people may be with bankers and politicians right now, do they want to hand over the reigns of power to an organisation which is trying, somehow, to combine the ethics of love and lynch mob?

The Campaign Against Climate Change is opting for the more quietly symbolic, marking “Fossil Fools Day” with a giant block of ice representing the melting polar ice caps while Stop the War Coalition is rallying tomorrow with protestors bringing “shoes, baby dolls, photos and other symbols of death and destruction”.

It’s a hearts and minds battle from both the politicians’ and protestors’ sides of the ramparts - but is the British public ready for revolution? 

Follow the Twitterverse’s on the ground take on the #G20.