Very interesting post but I believe that you have mixed two entirely different beasts. That is the creation of information and the vast sea of data available. Information or knowledge cannot be measured by size, but is what it is. Context is important, not the size.

My personal example for the information hierarchy is this:

Data: Numbers

Information: Adds context so that these numbers form a bus schedule.

Knowledge: Knowing how to interpret the bus schedule to catch a bus to Toledo.

Wisdom: Fusion of Knowledge from different sources (the weather) to determine that the bus will probably be late getting to Toledo due to a snow storm passing through the Mid-west. This requires the fusion of knowledge of the bus schedule, how buses operate and how weather can affect the operation of said buses. (Of course knowledge of delays built into a bus schedule may lead you to determine the bus will arrive on time)

Now this is a simple example for illustration (data need not be numbers but could be pictures or even passages of text).

As for the second part of your story the story. I think tweets and sound bytes do not have enough context to be considered Information. An example is that information, like the bus schedule is clear and not open to alternative interpretation. However a tweet, such as "Record snow fall on the east coast" may be interpreted as "proof of global warming (weather change)", "proof of global warming hoax (it must be colder on the east coast)" or even a comment about some other east coast where snow fall has only been recorded for the past 10 years (rendering the data useless in determining global warming patterns).

Because of tweets and sound bytes lack complete context they should be considered data. They must be placed in context to be of value, unless as you have suggested they are simply catalysts, where they are not required to rate as data or knowledge. In closing, placing tweets and sound bytes into context allows the formation of knowledge, but too often they are taken out of context and contribute to the level of noise that must be reduced to gain knowledge.