Twitter® For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13. Changing the World, One Tweet at a Time

In This Chapter

• Twittering the globe for change

• Organizing people online and in real life

• Engaging in citizen journalism

Twitter is a great communications tool for businesses and persons alike, and it has the potential to connect people and create relationships over a variety of discussions, interests, and geographies. When people use Twitter to grow their communities and share observations and insights on issues and situations that matter to them, interesting things start to happen. Twitter becomes a touch-point by which users try to improve their worlds.

In this chapter, we share true stories of global and social-change initiatives that either started or were facilitated by the use of Twitter, as well as world and local events aided by Twitter. We close the chapter with a few examples that illustrate Twitter's ability to spread messages of goodwill and world improvement through its user base.

Twittering the Globe for Change

Twitter offers a platform for immediate news delivery and instant communication with millions of twitterers around the world. So, despite the seemingly confining 140-character limit, Twitter has become accepted by many as an extremely effective tool for social change on both a local and global level.

Quite a few individuals and organizations have begun to use Twitter for outreach, sharing news, publicizing activities and events, raising funds, mobilizing grassroots efforts, and a number of other ways for effecting ...