HOLLYWOOD — Over the past year, many a joke has been made at the expense of Twitter and for good reason.

On a daily basis, the social networking/micro-blogging service has yielded a virtual treasure trove of celebrity-generated silliness.

It has been a gift to us entertainment reporter types for obvious reasons, but Twitter has also done much to refute those long-held accusations that we — gasp! — deliberately make the rich and famous sound inane and shallow by taking their words out of context.

Now that those words in question are transmitted directly from the horses’ mouths — in a neatly concise 140 characters or less — we would seem to be cleared of all charges.

But in recent weeks we’ve witnessed a different, less frivolous side to Tweeting that could suggest a more lasting application beyond learning what your favourite celeb has decided to eat for lunch today.

A day after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti hit, Wyclef Jean’s minute-by-minute Tweets from his devastated homeland brought the kind of galvanizing immediacy to the online community that traditional methods of eyewitness reporting simply couldn’t accomplish.

More significantly, Jean, an early Twitter adopter, directed his followers to his non-profit organization asking them to text $5 donations.

By the end of the first week, Jean’s Yele Haiti raised $2 million, setting the stage for other celebrities to do their bit for the relief effort, such as George Clooney, who was instrumental in rallying his colleagues for Friday’s Hope For Haiti telethon.

In addition to personally giving $50,000 to the charity, Alyssa Milano, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, issued a Tweet Challenge, inviting corporations to match her donation.

Sandra Bullock and Madonna have also been generous donors.

While the Haitian relief campaign is certainly the largest mounted to date on the four-year-old social networking site, it’s not the first time Twitter has been used as a tool for social activism.

When American TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained and imprisoned in North Korea last year, entertainment reporter Richard Horgan established the Twitter account @LiberateLaura for information sharing and updates.

Although the incarcerated CurrentTV journalists were eventually released and brought home through the diplomatic efforts of Bill Clinton, Horgan kept the account going, addressing the human rights situation in North Korea on a broader scale.

Has Twitter really come of age?

It definitely seems to be looking that way.

What was widely dismissed not too long ago as a disposable novelty — the 21st century equivalent of toy walkie-talkies — suddenly seems to have taken on a value and importance ranking right up there, if not, eclipsing a Skype in terms of portability and affordable communication potential.

Of course, it remains to be seen how this whole Twitter thing pans out over the months to come, and should it continue to gain respectability, perhaps a more serious, less twittery-sounding name change may be in order.

In the mean time, dear Tweeps, fear not.

We’ll always have Paris…and Tila … and Speidi ... and Tori … and Ashton & Demi ... and …