What’s your favorite way to gather the latest live breaking news online? There are certainly a plethora of options. Many users favor the major news outlets, whose websites feature online breaking news in text format and with streaming video. But there are some new and interesting sources of online news resulting from the merging of social bookmarking sites with live online news media.

The one example I’ll delve into for now is NewsWire, the new service from social bookmarking site Digg which now offers live breaking news online. One of the distinctive things about this news service is the way it allows highly customizable content filtering. This can have the negative effect of limiting one’s view into the world of current events, but it can also be very useful for weeding through the overwhelming amount of live breaking news online.

NewsWire users are able to filter their content with specifications like a minimum number of Diggs (i.e. how many people have viewed and recommended certain articles), type of media (like text format versus news videos) and subject matter (say, if you want to focus mainly on regional news, or financial news).

Another way to get live breaking news online with a similar level of customization is to use an RSS reader to follow news oriented RSS feeds. There are, of course, a vast number of RSS feeds available now, but setting up a personal feed that focuses strictly on news updates from reliable outlets is a great way to get your live breaking news online without having to constantly search through the major news sites for the content that’s most important to you.