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Doriano "Paisano" Carta writes on Mashable.com how Twitter has exploded into an Internet phenomenon where people sent tweets including the first news about the Mumbai attacks, the deaths of prominent figures, and the 2008 Presidential election.

Here are the 10 most memorable Twitter moments of 2008. Share your most memorable Twitter moments in the comments.

The Giants snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with seconds left in the game to claim the title and crush the Patriots’ dreams. All throughout Twitterland you could hear the thunderous silence from the once vocal New England fans followed by a flood of tweets from all of the joyous Giant fans.

Zefrank launched a fun experiment in March 2008 called the Color Wars which created quite a buzz across the twittersphere as everyone scrambled to join teams. It soon became web 2.0’s equivalent to dodgeball, and nobody wanted to be picked last. Several challenges were presented and the teams all battled it out, but ultimately chaos seemed to reign supreme. The interest and excitement quickly wore off as the experiment came to an end with Team Puce ranked on top. While the results were not as fulfilling as everyone had hoped, it did prove the theory that Twitter could be used to establish teams or groups with a common goal instantly and with little guidance.

April 3, 2008 became “Good People Day” thanks to the ever popular Gary Vaynerchuk who came up with the idea after a conversation with Mashable’s Adam Hirsch. Gary released a video where he challenged everyone on Twitter to tell the world who they thought were the good people that rarely get noticed or acknowledged. The whole idea spread like wildfire and everyone started expressing their appreciation for those in their social networking circle. It was a great example of the power of the medium.

In July, Twitter finally did something about their weak search capabilities by purchasing Summize, which was the best search engine for their service. It was a brilliant move that was met with widespread applause and continues to be a very useful and popular tool for Twitter.

For 18 magical days in August, everyone on Twitter discussed the incredible feats they witnessed at the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. There were the record breaking 8 gold medals by Michael Phelps and the multiple world record shattering performances by Usaine Bolt in track and field, as well as many other unforgettable moments. The use of Twitter and shortened links to YouTube videos of the Olympic events were a perfect match.

In late August there was a great deal of coverage of Hurricane Gustav on Twitter and the havoc it wreaked. Several people in and around the danger zones reported updates on Twitter, giving others up close and personal insight to what was happening. Damon Cortesi even launched GustavTracker, a search site for Twitter updates related to Hurricane Gustav, including lists of people that were lost or found. Gustav became a blueprint for how to use social networking to report on such events, and so the same process was repeated for the natural disasters like the October 6.4 earthquake in Pakistan that followed.

By far, the biggest event to hit the tweets was the 2008 Presidential Election, with each of the presidential candidates — Barack Obama and John McCain — gaining thousands of followers on the service. Current TV even integrated Twitter into their debate coverage, bringing political tweets to the big screen.

Throughout the election there were heated debates on Twitter, leading some to defollow over political ideas. As always, it’s dangerous to discuss politics and religion in a public forum such as Twitter. In the end, while many twitterers were thrilled with Obama’s win, many also couldn’t help but be upset that he stopped using the service.

During the inaugural celebration of International Baby Wearing Week this past November, Motrin launched a new ad campaign targeting the “baby wearing” demographic. Twitter moms were outraged by the campaign and felt it completely missed the mark. By the time Motrin caught wind of the situation, the situation had spiraled into a public relations disaster. However, Motrin made an effort to connect with the community and quickly apologized.

The Mumbai massacre at the end of November was another tragic event that absolutely captivated the Twitter community as well as the world. Several people near ground zero provided real-time updates of the horrifying events in India where over 170 people were killed. Unfortunately for Twitter, an inherent limitation of their service was exposed when a few members were locked out of their accounts due to excessive posts, which prevented the world from receiving their updates. One hopes Twitter can make exceptions during certain circumstances such as this one to allow members to post unlimited updates.

Twitter became a place to report the deaths and remember the lives of some of our favorite actors, politicians, and overall influences. This year some of the biggest names were: Paul Newman, Tim Russert, George Carlin, Heath Ledger, Bernie Mac and Randy Pausch, the professor that gave us all the Last Lecture.