Tornado is an asynchronous Python web framework that allows for non-blocking and scalable web applications. It uses asynchronous requests, has a simple database API without an ORM, and programmer-friendly templates. Tornado has proven successful in production at FriendFeed and is well-suited for real-time web services, popular dynamic sites, REST APIs, and non-CMS sites. The document provides an example of using Tornado to make an asynchronous Twitter API call and generate a Twitter badge.