When Paris Hilton was taking over the world, dancing from the table-tops of New York nightclubs to the world's TV screens through her hit reality show "The Simple Life," even sensible media outlets occasionally debated the issue of whether this seeming air-head was, in fact, an undercover genius. No such question was ever asked of Lindsay Lohan.

Now, I'm not so sure.

This week, Lindsay Lohan's Twitter page became the most compelling thing on the Internet. Named after her self-tanner (Sevin Nyne) and leggings (6126) ranges, http://twitter.com/sevinnyne6126 has become a unique combination of diary, dialog and self-generated gossip column possible only in the Twitter age.

Earlier this week, a "topless" (but G-rated) self-portrait, posted to her Twitpic account, became a news story that jostled for attention with hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets of Tehran. And that was just the beginning.

At 2.25 am Tuesday morning, accompanied by a dark picture from a NYC nightclub that showed nothing, a post appeared that purportedly fingered Justin Timberlake for making out with a young woman that was not his girlfriend, actress Jessica Biel. While the post itself was perhaps ambiguous-- "So dark - wheres jb cheater" -- the incident was so widely witnessed and blogged about by others, that Lindsay just seems to have been one more person who saw a celebrity doing something naughty and immediately broadcast it on the Internet.

She has since claimed someone else hacked into her Twitter account to make that post (and presumably two follow-ups denouncing "cheaters"), which absolutely nobody believes.

Her transformation into a late-arriving Internet gossip columnist is illuminated by some of the other things she throws out when she's bored. At 1.47am Wednesday, she even solicited Perez Hilton for a chat, writing "@perezhilton are you writing tomorrows blogs?" As a former professional gossip myself, I'm well aware that the rich and famous themselves are apt to drop stories in the columns. But I've never seen a famous actress use the Internet to broadcast her seeming willingness to talk.

She also uses Twitter to talk to people like her on-again-off-again girlfriend Samantha Ronson, Madonna's manager Guy Oseary, and even drop the occasional celeb sighting: "Barbara Walters is so sweet! She's sitting behind me on the airplane!"

All this buzz is not only handy for influencing the news cycle (you don't see Lindsay Tweeting about that $400,000 worth of jewels that mysteriously went missing from her recent photo shoot), it has also been very good for traffic. As of writing, she has over 73,000 followers -- quite possibly more people than paid to see her last movie.

For years, Lindsay's headlines for drinking, drugging and DUI-ing suggested that she was being swallowed by Hollywood's oldest and most predictable cliche, never to be seen again. But by harnessing the power of Twitter, she seems to be reinventing her celebrity into something that is palpably new and modern.

And that ... is incredibly smart.