Brits have shown the world just how preoccupied with the weather we really are via the medium of Twitter. The dumping of a few inches of snow and the subsequent, inevitable shut down of Our Roman/Victorian era transportation network lead a lot of people to be stuck at home Twittering about the ‘arctic’ conditions.

The #uksnow tag was beating even #superbowl at certain stages on Monday, highlighting the huge leap in popularity of the micro blogging platform in the UK in the last few weeks.

Within hours of the first flake falling, a Google Map mashup was inviting people rate the snow in their postcode out of 10 with a simple Twitter text message.

Then once workers realised they weren’t possibly getting to the office, the avalanche began. #uksnow comments dominated the conversation – and to some extent still do right now. Photo service Twitpic featured a hell of a lot of snowmen and ‘picture postcard’ back garden scenes, and some genuinely useful travel information was also available too.

It was an exemplary show of the shared national joy/misery that a bit of snow causes us (that must have proved thoroughly unfathomable to people in other snow-prone climbs), but is the Twitter response just the latest social network fad? Certainly the hastily arranged flash event in Trafalgar Square @snowballfight smacked of trying too hard.

It seems unlikely that the Great British public will rush to post an image of their back garden every time it snows from now on. So to that extent we are witnessing the excitement at discovering a new toy. Yet the whole episode also reveals how people wish to use their media these days – to natter about the issues of the day in real time, and to have a nose around to see what other people are experiencing. The most basic human social instincts catered for in 140 character text messages and endlessly similar grainy photos.

It all hints towards the ways we’ll be communicating in the near future, even if it seems a bit silly now. The news networks, (who have really gone overboard with their coverage of the conditions), will take the hardest hit when people automatically turn to Twitter for all they need to know about shared events like this in real-time. It may only be text messaging, but the service has already proved it’s superiority as a medium, and we know this is only early days…