Twitter influencing the world stories are becoming more common.

I foresee the day soon where stories like this will be about as boring as a story of a reporter using a car or telephone, but right now.. HOW COOL!

Twitter in Congress

A tweet from @CoachDeb caught my attention:

@johnculberson u just became my FAVORITE Tweeter! TX 4 keeping America informed while the lights went out on Congress by #Pelosi

I hadn’t seen the event live, but following Congressman Culberson told me more

I will let you click through to see how Twitter is a tool for democracy. My objective is show how easy it was for me to get news.. even when I wasn’t paying much attention.

Should you trust Twitter.. The Exxon Mess

As soon as I finished catching up on Congress through Twitter, I noticed a message from @BenMack to read this post from @jowyang

How “Janet” Fooled the Twittersphere She’s the Voice of Exxon Mobil

The lessons learned section at the bottom of the story are a must read

Twitter is not just for telling your tweeps about your cat, hat and TV watching plans (I’m watching The Cat in the Hat.. how did you know?). All these tweets are bits and pieces of what is really going on in our lives and some of it is very important.

But remember, Twitter is much like hanging out in a downtown shopping district of a large city. You’ll find some bargains, can meet up with friends, and meet new ones (even better on Twitter). But watch out for the guy that is selling watches and handbags. They may not be the real.

Share your Twitter Makes the the News story below.. not just a story about Twitter.. but Twitter helping the news spread faster, or best of all getting the story out that we might not have heard otherwise.

What’s your favortie story of how Twitter changed the world?

I doesn’t have to be about you. You don’t need to be the person in the story, or breaking the news. We are all reporters now!

Just scroll down and post your comment so we can include you in the our book. We know that the tweets of all of us will give us a better book. We are writing Twitter style.

Be sure to include your @ name so we can follow you.

Here’s a story of Twitter marriage proposals on Twitter.

markdavidson: @DaisyAvenue Will you marry me? Please DM me with your response. Thank you.

Get the rest of the story here:

If you have a romance story to share for the Twitter Handbook, post a comment here. (don’t forget your @ handle)

@RobbMontgomery writes about the value of Twitter for newspaper editors and reporters

Opinion: Why Twitter matters to newspaper editors and reporters - editorsweblog

Do you still read a newspaper?

How much do you rely on Twitter for your news?

Post a comment about how Twitter use has affected your consumption of news media… we’ll be quoting you in the book, so be sure to include your name and Twitter @ handle.

Great article summarizing the current controversy

Twitter says they took their TOS from Flickr, which describes itself as a community.

Now Twitter say they are a communications service.

Should they be responsible for removing offensive content?

Post your comments here. Don’t forget your @ handle so we quote you in the Twitter Handbook

Chris Wilson @aithene, a Multimedia Design Specialist at Freelancers

I had been on twitter for several months by by late 2007, and was enjoying a small, but cozy network of just under 200 friends, many of whom I really enjoyed chatting with on a regular basis. As the co-host of the Answers for Freelancers! podcast, I’d started playing in social media, dabbling here and there, and had found the most enjoyment from my Twitter network over any other social media space I’d dabbled in.

Anyway, just before Thanksgiving of 2007, my sister-in-law went missing. When the case stalled out with the Florida police, the family started looking for other means of finding her. As a web designer and new media hobbyist, I fell back on my skills and started a Wordpress Blog with all of the details, and then turned to my Twitter Network.

We were unsure what anyone could do, since this was MY network, not my sister-in-law’s, but we put the call out there, figuring that if nothing else, we might generate some diggs and try to get some media attention and coverage to help out the search.

What really ended up happening, though, was that it made my twitter network aware of what I was going thru, and this awareness began shaping things in a very unexpected way. It became a truly mind-opening experience for me.

Dozens of knowledgeable folks began offering advice on where to look, who to call, what needed to be done, and what information still needed to be gathered. Many of these were people who had lost friends and family in a similar way and who had experience with the ins and outs of a missing-person search. See, I didn’t approach a network of people who had been involved with missing people, but one immediately formed around me. They provided information that my family didn’t have and that wasn’t provided by law enforcement. The police, in fact, offered very little in the way of advice on what we could do. They opened a case, told us they were looking, and then after they determined that she’d left the state, kind of quit. So, having recommendations come from people who have gone thru all of this before was priceless.

One grand Kudos goes to Christopher Penn (@cspenn) who provided a real turning point in our search efforts. Because of Chris’ marketing background, he is VERY well versed with MySpace. Since Manessa’s social network lived on MySpace, Christ volunteered his time and expertise to set up a MySpace page and invited all of Manessa’s online network to help join us in searching for her, then turned the keys over to us to manage. This was something that no one in our family really knew about, and we might have ended up waiting for days before it happened if left to us. Immediately after this site was up, however, we began receiving all sorts of information. We knew what state she was in, we knew what friends she’d been hanging around with, and we had several ’sightings’ of her.

There were also twitterer’s who offered time and support in other ways, all of which were appreciated. In the end, this group of friends and colleagues that I had hoped MIGHT act as a small Digg army (which they did very well, by the way) and possibly pass along some links, had self-organized around us to create a small, but very knowledgeable task force in a very relevant, but completely unexpected way.

This was such an unbelievably organic response, it caught my family and I completely off-guard. It gave me another perspective on, and a new respect for something that had beforehand simply been a playground and pass time for me.

Do you have a story of finding what you need using Twitter. Please Share you Twinterview below. Include your Twitter @ handle so we can follow you

CNN report of a student using Twitter to get out of an Egyptian Jail

Highlights of the Story on Frontline

• Student James Karl Buck sent one-word text from detention about his arrest
• Twitter message allowed college to get word, hire a lawyer for him
• Now Buck’s quest is to find translator Mohammed Maree, who was arrested with him
• Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows users to update their status

James Buck posted his report on Frontline

Sign the petition to Free Malee

I’ll leave the reporting to CNN and the thousands of messages on Twitter. Thank goodness Buck got out safe and can continue to use his network to help Maree.

You can follow James Buck on Twitter for updates @jamesbuck

Let’s look at the power of Twitter in the story.

First off, thanks to @MarieLCoccia for sending the link to me. The story was posted while I slept, but Marie knew I’d be interested and it was the top tweet on my Relpy screen this morning. I probably would have heard about the story, but with Marie’s tweet, I was able to do this blog post a lot sooner.

CNN also ran the story with “Twitter” in the headline. I’m guessing that a few CNN readers not using Twitter yet are joining today. Reminds me that offline, when I tell someone that I’m writing a book about Twitter, the usual response is “what?” or “I’ve been thinking of trying that.” All this power from a relatively unknown startup service.

The one word “arrested” would have been useless without context. I’m absolutely certain of this because of this tweet from yesterday:

wholesaler : Wow Warrenwhitlock arrested by doughnut whore with pink cuffs you go girl!

2008-04-25 14:28:04

That’s right, some clown made up an account and called himself the social media police. He ate donuts and harassed people about his “Twitter rules” (prompting my post “What You Should Do” The Rules of Social Media). At one point. he sent a message to me with the word “ARRESTED.” Several of my friends asked if he was serious, but no one hired took any other actions. They had context. They could read the other tweets and understood that I wasn’t in real danger.

The connections and relationships you build in your social network have real power in the real world. Dare I say that the twitterverse IS the real world full of real people.

We talk about work life, family life, online friends, offline connections like they are seperated from each other. With social media networks like Twitter, we combine them all into “my life”

What about you. Do you have boundaries? Are there people and places where you won’t tweet? Are there people who you haven’t told about the messages you are sending out to the twitterverse?

Please comment below so we can get the story right for the TwitterHandbook. I really appreciate your tweets, comments and trackbacks. They will make this a better book, and enrich my life.