I’ve been amazed at the power of twitter. I’ve used it to find raincoats, shortcuts on LA freeways, grocery lists, learn about PR, and connect to all kinds of cool people! But today I found the very best use so far.

We helped John a homeless friend who you met on invisiblepeople.tv travel up north to find work. Last night John was mugged and he lost everything. When you are homeless and lose everything it’s not like you can go to Macy’s and buy new clothes. You literally have nothing.

My first action was to go to Virgin Mobile and add some time to John’s phone. Next I tweet an urgent request for help to anyone in the Seattle area. RunJimmyRun was the first to respond and it just so happens John was a short distance from where Jimmy works. Jimmy helped John out with what he could and at least John will not sleep outside tonight. Last night he did and it was 27 degrees.

John is a great guy and has had a string of bad luck that is far worse than mine. My heart goes out to him. He has a long battle to go. He saved money so he could look for work and get back on his feet. Even his bags were taken, he has nothing! If you can help please let me know.

The collaborative real-time interaction of twitter made it possible to help a homeless friend through a crisis. So far helping homeless people is very best use of twitter that I know.

What’s the best use you have found for twitter?

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 8:02 pm and is filed under My Big Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.