Twitter isn’t the only social media/web-based tool to “democratize” the flow of information, but it has certainly sped up the way that news—not to mention rumors, scams and other potentially discreditable info—is disseminated. At the 140Conf, Arianna Huffington, Peter Hirshberg, Al Seckel, KCDL’s Caprice Young and CNN’s Jon Kline discussed the hurdles that media and educational organizations face in dealing with an ever-increasing stream of information without validation or context. They also talked about how companies can try to profit from it.

—Using the stream wisely: “Companies are finding ways to harness this info; The Hourly Press lets editors take lists and links of news that’s resonating in different areas, and get updated hourly on how and where it’s moving across the web,” Hirshberg said. “There’s a company called Social Compact that looks at 30 sources of real-time data to help drive investment in under-served urban areas. The AMAs used Twitter visualizations during the live broadcast to make sure that the show reflected what was important to the viewers.”

—Crowd-sourcing better news stories: “The best way to make sure you’re telling the right story is to have as many inputs as possible,” said Kline. “It takes more time because you have more info to vet; it can also create more confusion. But with input from multiple journalists and viewers—because we can’t be everywhere, but our viewers can—we can paint a 3D picture instead of a 2D one.”

—A non-stop flow of information needs human moderation: “You can’t do away with traditional human fact-checking, in the same way you can’t do away with human comment moderation,” Huffington said. “We have 30 comment moderators working 24/7. I insisted on it from the start, because if we were going have civil discourse and criticism—and get people to write for free—then we needed to curb the trolls and anonymous violence [that they can incite].”

—Prepping the next generation of news consumers—and creators: “Kids today are tech-savvy, but not informationally-savvy,” said Young, CEO of KC Distance Learning, and formerly CEO of the California Charter (NSDQ: CHTR) Schools Association. “They have no ability to distinguish the credibility of the content they see on the net, but they’re extremely good at spreading it. They’re some of the most active creators of this real-time information, so we need to make sure that we’re teaching them how to vet it, first.”