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here’s little doubt that Twitter was one of the most talked about startups over the past year. But just how much did it grow in 2008? The final numbers are in, and according to Compete, they’re astounding: 752%, for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December.

After starting the year with only around 500,000 unique monthly visitors, Twitter saw its most dramatic growth in the back half of ’08, picking up more than one million additional visitors in December alone. And that’s all just in the US. Here’s the chart:

As the death toll rises in Gaza, where do you turn for up to the minute information? If you’re like us, you want a mix of information from traditional media outlets and social media sites alike. You probably already know about Twitter Search, but are you using custom searches, social searches, grabbing RSS feeds, looking at the aggregate view, or having alerts delivered to you?

If you need a little help tracking the crisis, use this post to find a few quick tips and tactics for tracking Gaza news as it develops.