Twitter has turned out to be a useful tool for some small businesses coping with customer-service or public-relations crises.

The social-media service–where users send short “tweets” to followers who have signed up to receive the messages–came in handy for Innovative Beverage Group Holdings Inc., whose drankbeverage.com site crashed last month after a surge in traffic following a segment on Fox News for the company’s so-called relaxation beverage, which contains “calming” ingredients like valerian root and melatonin. News Corp. (NWS) owns Fox News as well as The Wall Street Journal.

Innovative Beverage notified consumers on its Twitter feed that it was working to resolve the problem. The company also did a search on Twitter for mentions of the site crash, so it could respond with tweets describing its repair efforts.

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Impending hurricanes and missing children make the local news, but what about smaller incidents–like senior citizens who wander from their care facility or nearby traffic accidents–that residents still want to know about?

Nixle, a San Francisco community-information startup, has developed a notification system for authorities that lets them alert people in their community by text or email. A police officer can quickly tell local subscribers, for example, if a bank robbery suspect is on the loose.

People shop online and send emails instantaneously, said Nixle CEO Craig Mitnick, who has worked as a prosecutor in New Jersey and a legal correspondent for Fox News, “but when you lose a dog, you still have to post a flyer on a telephone pole.”

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Days after a wave of phishing attacks fooled thousands of Twitter users, it appears that another security hole has been found by…someone. Obama’s account, unused since election day, sent out an affiliate link to a survey with a gas card prize, Fox News said that “Bill O’Reily is gay” (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and Britney Spears made a lewd post about her anatomy. Rick Sanchez, the Twitter-loving CNN anchor, says he’s “high on crack and might not be coming into work today.”

The Fox tweet was deleted an hour after it was posted, so the password may not have been changed. The Facebook account on Twitter just posted a link to porn, so it appears that the situation remains unresolved. Update: Twitter says it’s been resolved but that users should change their passwords! The Twitter blog has just posted an explanation of the breach.

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It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent. Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said. Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist.

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