Shell to announce hurricane updates on Twitter

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Shell Oil said Wednesday it will use instant messaging system Twitter to announce hurricane updates during the 2009 storm season.

The innovation is aimed at the news media in an effort to keep journalists quickly informed of storm developments, but the service will be available to the public, Shell said.

"We would encourage anybody who's interested in how storms are affecting our operations to follow us on Twitter," spokeswoman Darci Sinclair said.

"The amount of information will be limited. Most likely we'll just push people to updates online. We wouldn't be able to put everything in a Tweet," she said.

Twitter messages, or Tweets, are limited to 140 characters on the Internet-based system of mass instant-messaging. The Shell hurricane update identifier is shell_stormctr.

(Reporting by Bruce Nichols)