Twitter turned four years old this past Sunday, March 21. At a time when news sites, such as CNN.com and NYTimes.com, are experiencing a decline in the number of unique visitors, 50 million tweets are being sent out per day — that’s almost 600 tweets every second.

But this isn’t to be a Twitter fan-fest. Instead, consider this an illustration, how the prediction made at Twitter’s introduction as a new start-up at SxSWi that it would soon sweep the world, came to fruition.

So what is next in the south by southwest crystal ball?

The predictions made this year at SxSWi suggested that news stations would soon compete with 40,000 other channels for an audience. (Oh, yeah, and you’ll be able to watch them *all* on your cell phone.) Other predictions focused on the notion that the U.S. average broadband speed will double annually. So, if you don’t feel like watching TV, you’ll be able to download “Avatar in 3D”, and it won’t take long.

As technology develops and media converges, SxSWi continues to provide evidence that the communication landscape is changing… and will continue to change. Media will converge. We’ll see audio, video and print combine on the mobile Web.

And journalists will be forced to keep up.

At the SxSW Film + Interactive Trade Show, there were already examples of news adapting to this evolving landscape. The self-proclaimed “TV for the Internet” company Next New Networks, already broadcasts television programming online. Since March 2007, its programming (partly entertainment and partly niche news) has been viewed by more than 400 million tuning, or should I say, clicking in.

What’s unique about this venture is that it has employed a distribution strategy – sending its content to other online outlets, such as YouTube or iTunes. And it won’t be long before this content is fast-streamed to your cell phone.

In the SxSWi Convergence Future15 sessions, mobile media was seen as a major trend for the future. Instead of loading mobile phones with various apps, the mobile Web is predicted to be faster and easier to navigate; thus, eliminating a need for applications. Could this mean not only faster mobile news alerts but also live-streaming news broadcast reports?

Absolutely.

To make the most of the Web, SxSWi speakers and panelists argued that online tools are best put to use when providing context to a news story. For example, at the “Future of Context” panel session, Jay Rosen asked why is Wikipedia a separate service from a news site such as NYTimes.com?

Well, in fact, NYTimes.com has developed its own “online encyclopedia” of sorts with Times Topics — an archive of topic pages, searchable via topic (from Iraq to global warming to foster care) and provides the user with the history of that topic, all news that was ever reported on that topic, and a host of related graphics and photos.

New to the journalism world, the online service DotSpots is designed to provide context for news in a unique and “interactive” way, similar to Times Topics. But instead of being driven by a traditional news staff, the service is driven by citizen journalists.

Dots allow people to create citizen news pods, which connect their perspectives from the blogosphere with mainstream news articles on the Web for others to see. The company is privately funded and, unlike The New York Times, currently hiring.

The future of context will remain a topic that shapes the future of journalism – on that panel with Rosen were Tristan Harris, Staci Kramer and Matt Thompson. They defined context as the foundation of a story; an enrichment to one’s world experience.

Think: what would a news site look like if it were structured around context (and easily navigable on the mobile Web)?

With the introduction of innovative media tools placed in the hands of the everyday citizen, or next generation journalist, the sky is the limit. Like a directional signal or weather vane, SxSWi is charting a course following the journalistic winds and all we have to do is accept the evolving path.

For a deeper look into contextual reporting online and the future of news, the discussion that began in the southwest continues at www.futureofcontext.com.