Twittering for good
In his presentation at TED, the founder of Twitter, even Evan Williams acknowledges that he didn’t anticipate the many of the creative uses this simple tool would be used for:
What we didn’t anticipate was the many, many other uses that would evolve from this very simple system. One of the things we realized was how important Twitter could be during real-time events. When the wildfires broke out in San Diego, in October of 2007, people turned to Twitter to report what was happening and to find information from neighbors about what was happening around them.
Twitter (despite my initial skepticism), is obviously here to stay.
For those new to Twitter, Twitter allows you to express your thought, one 160 character or less statement at a time. Members can follow each others “tweets”. That’s it. The value of twitter is in is simplicity.
Like simple Lego blocks, it can scale up into more purposeful things that just vanity broadcasting. And many people are finding ways it can serve social causes. Here’s a couple I’ve come across lately:
Five Ways Nonprofit Organizations Can Really Connect on Twitter
Twittering for a cause: Web 2.0 and its philanthropic impact
TwitCause and TechCrunch’s write-up
Twitter for Social Entrepreneurship: The Top 100 Tweeps to Follow
