Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [100]
Figure 13-1: Twestival supports the nonprofit organization charity: water.
charity: water is not the only nonprofit to have benefited from Twitter’s broad reach and influence. Social Media for Nonprofits guru Beth Kanter (@kanter) conducted the first Twitter-based charity fund drive we know of when she decided to send a young Cambodian woman to college with a little help from her friends. Beth’s ongoing work usually benefits Cambodian orphans via The Sharing Foundation. Other Twitterers donated money and gathered at a fundraising social event in Boston to help victims of domestic violence through Gradon Tripp’s (@gradontripp) Social Media for Social Change (@SM4SC), shown in Figure 13-2).
Figure 13-2: @SM4SC raises $20,000 for the Jane Doe foundation.
Politics
You can gauge the impact of an issue around the world by checking Twitter. During the 2008 United States elections, news junkies used Twitter to follow not just the issues, but also the sentiments of people from around the world: disillusionment with the administration of George W. Bush, the shortcomings of U.S. foreign policy, the rapidly deteriorating economic situation, and the rise of Barack Obama (@barackobama). In the weeks leading up to the election, Twitter even launched a page specifically for campaign-related tweets and worked closely with Al Gore’s (@algore) company Current.TV on a video-text integration of tweets into their election-related broadcasts.
Twitter users began to follow and monitor politics in real time, bonding over some candidates, making fun of political gaffes and snafus, and overall creating a real-time political metric that instantly became a media favorite. Twitter users live-tweeted debates and stump speeches, and even less-active twitterers turned to the service to keep tabs on what was going on in the world of politics as it happened.
Staffers caught on to the fact that politicians can use Twitter to measure the buzz about them in real time. During the election, Barack Obama’s team was in on the ground floor when it came to the use of Twitter as a publicity and organization tool, choosing the platform as an important way to interact with prospective voters.
The night of the U.S. presidential election, Twitter was nearly brought to its knees by millions and millions of shared concerns, excitement, questions, voting reports, and a massive buzz of connection around the events that were unfolding. Twitter’s technological system took on massive traffic from all over the globe and managed not to crash, although there were time delays, especially in the SMS-to-Twitter message flow. It was amazing to share it all virtually with friends and loved ones from around the globe in real time on our phones and computers.
The reactions were varied, but no matter which side of the fence you were on, you were a part of the first, truly real-time, global reaction to a national election. Barack Obama’s election victory was historic for twitterers, in more ways than one.
Twitter also helped people around the world aggregate their reactions from other social-media services. TwitPics, YouTube videos, Qik channels, Utterli and TalkShoe voice posts, and plenty of other services all fed into Twitter in a massive data stream that pretty much anyone around the world could access.
Natural disasters
Twitter has also caught on as an extremely important medium for natural-disaster reporting, such as hurricanes Gustav and Ike, wildfires and earthquakes in California, and the massive and tragic 2008 earthquake in China, as well as countless smaller hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and tornados. These days, with so many people using the service, news of major weather events often break on Twitter long before the mainstream media reports it.
You can use Twitter