Looking for stories of an unexpected good thing happening from a tweet

I launched http://www.pettweets.org to promote an animal services non-profit and have raised some money, some awareness and had some fun. There are a lot of animals being "voiced" on twitter. All kinds of animals. Lots of fun to listen to what they are saying. @sockington, @ghostofpeter, @archymehitabel are my favorites. Nice question, thanks! @jmacofearth

Using twitter during our first #collegejourn chat, the meta question came up: "what _is_ journalism" one tweet to @jayrosen_nyu got an expert in the field to respond. Twitter = very cool.

About 6 months ago, a couple of us were twittering about the weather and ended up all exchanging photos to compare. We started exchanging photographs every Saturday and then I made a website to hold them: http://twitter.blog.me.uk/ Usually 10-15 people take part and there have been some great shots (and we've been making lots of new friends). (and if any readers are interested in joining in, just tweet your Saturday photograph to @SatScenes!)

I am the Reference Librarian at Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Library in Presque Isle ME. I had a question from a patron regarding information on Maine's Blue Laws, and as I was putting together a packet of information, Bangor Daily News tweeted a new story about Blue Laws which I was immediately able to access and incorporate. Our library LOVES Twitter!

You can take a look at what Laura Fitton did for Charity:Water using twitter and others. http://pistachioconsulting.com/well-w... You can also see what is going on with Drupalcon 2009 in DC. The guys there have been quite active on the web. http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/ I may post some others later.

A few days before the Inauguration I sought to bring to President Obama's attention that the Family Forest Project had discovered that he shared a distant ancestor with President Lincoln - making them distant cousins. I tweeted this news. Then, when my assertion was challeged by a tweet from @Searchguru, I was able to tweet back, and then respond to her via email with the detailed proof which won her over as a friend and also convinced @familyforest to join Twitter. Twitter is leading the way to better, faster, more concise interactive communications.

Graduate student James Karl Buck getting out of jail in Egypt after Twittering "arrested" to his journalistic followers is the most significant example I can think of.

My first tweet out about looking for work resulted in my awesome position as Events Coordinator with Blurb.

I tweeted this http://twitter.com/khartline/status/1... and almost immediately, heard a reply from @maringuy, Director of Marketing at Blurb. He started following me a few weeks earlier per a recommendation of Blurb's PR all-star who I had a phone call with about a potential sponsorship for another event I was working on.

After my tweet, Mike and I exchanged emails and a phone call. I came in the next day for an interview and ended up staying for 2.5 hours. I meet with our CEO a week later and was offered the job almost immediately.

Oh the power of Twitter! Keep up the good work!
*Cheers,
Karen Hartline @khartline

From a tweet came £250k of vouchers & Celebrity endorsement.

Hadn't long discovered Twitter when @mbites posted invitation to present at London's Future of Web Apps. I took him up on his offer which resulted in a pretty embarrassing 60 seconds on stage. But as a result one retailer gave us £250k of gift vouchers to give to our users and I'm now working with several celebrity mums to create the biggest raffle event ever. It all starts happening at the end of March.

The site is live (albeit in a basic form) here: http://raffle.it and if you need anything I'm @pascalw

I'm guessing you'll get some pretty amazing stories and that in itself is an amazing twitter event!

Happy reading

Pascal

@mediaphyter was looking to make new followers, the catch was one was supposed to tell her what was interesting about that person. I never knew that being a dreamer, a poet and an ordinary human being can sound interesting to someone like @mediaphyter. lol.

@ev @mingyeow (@mrtweet) recommended me to @Twestival_LA. It's a charity event that I didn't know about at the time. So I contacted @ajpape who was trying to start planning for Twestival LA. It's been a long journey, but and amazing experience as well. We're helping the good people of Charity:Water bring clean water to other parts of the world. I had the chance to meet the founder, @scottharrison, and was just blown away by how much has been done by his charity already. The best part is, it's brought the community much closer together. We've met face-to-face to help and worked on so many projects to promote the event. I've been so many great people along away... all because of Twitter.

Here's the exact tweet that started brought my attention to @Twestival_LA
http://twitter.com/twestival_LA/statu...

Thanks again for your support!
I <3 Twitter!
@daynah

Here's Team @Twestival_LA!

An almost-funny story ... starting with a tweet from a developer I've never met, but who provides endless entertainment and banter:

http://twitter.com/mdhughes/statuses/...

His random, developer-insane comment about a mythical replacement for Twitter tweaked me to think: "what the heck." I do a `whois` on it, find it free, and register it, putting up a stupid single serve site mocking the great and/or wonderful Twitter.

The funny part isn't the lame onesie or the slick domain name. It's the bumping into a random, interesting dev, and having some fun that would never have existed otherwise. The whole thing is orthogonal enough that it's not creepy, and it's expressive enough that it's as fun as IRC was from when we all started this gig.

In August of last year, I was talking with a music PR person from NYC on the phone. When we got off, she tweeted that she had spoken with me.

Someone from California saw the tweet, started following my tweets, and visited my website. I followed hers as well. And we started a conversation, which spanned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, email and phone.

Long story short... we fell in love. She's planning on moving cross-country later this year so we can be together.

Never would have happened if it weren't for that first tweet... and I never tire of telling the story.

M.

(mark_marshall on twitter.)

Hi Ev,

I'm @twitchhiker, and I'm attempting to travel from the UK to a small island off the coast of New Zealand in 30 days, relying only on the goodwill and support of Twitter followers.

I'm raising money for an amazing cause called charity: water, so while I can't give you an example of one tweet changing the world for the best, I hope by the end of the March I can tell you about a handful of tweets changing plenty of lives.

Paul
@paul_a_smith
http://twitchhiker.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009...

I was introduced to someone via Twitter!

My friend, Melissa, follows Greg, who Follows Ken. Melissa and Ken and I are in DC; Greg is in LA. Greg sent a message to his followers about his wonderful friend, Ken, in DC, who is single. Melissa, who is not single, read Greg's tweet and thought of me. After checking with me, Melissa introduced Ken and I on Twitter.

We tweeted for a while, and exchanged some direct messages, then e-mail, then phone calls. Finally, this past Saturday, we met for a first date. And it was fantastic.

We're planning a second date.

This morning, Ken flew to LA to see Greg, who tweeted me on Saturday to ask how the date went, and is sure to give Ken the third degree and then, of course, take all the credit.

Kimberley
(mazzie on Twitter)

http://www.hubspot.com/blog/bid/4549/...

@EV, First thing that comes to mind is when @jkrums posted the picture of the US Airways plane that safely landed in the Hudson. I think he broke the story before any other news outlet...Good luck with TED

Hi Ev. the Twitter community came to our aid while we were trying to help a Mom and her family get away from an abusive situation and find a home. We were able to raise nearly 17k for her with over 12k being raised in 24 ours. Twitter was essential to this as people retweeted the story. Here is the link to the original post:

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emot...

And a link to the blog we created shortly after

http://darmano.typepad.com/daniela/

Hope this helps you. Most importantly, Twitter helped Daniela. She's got a head start thanks to the people who use your technology.

@armano

As a singer and a marketing nut, I tend to follow both musicians and marketers on Twitter. One day, I saw a tweet from one of my idols: a woman who promotes musicians online. She mentioned and listed the link for a musician who, she claimed, "knows what's going on," or something like that. I got curious, clicked on the link, and checked out his website and music.

He seemed to be exceptionally talented, diverse and... interesting. So I started following him on Twitter. He returned the favor, and pretty soon we were tweeting about music. Then we found each other on Facebook. Then tweets turned into emails and emails turned into phone calls and the next thing you know I'm flying across the country to meet him in person.

We fell in love. Madly. Now I'm leaving the town in which I've lived for the past 27 years to move over 3,000 miles to be with him forever.

All because of one little tweet.

On twitter: @nancytierney

Although the "event promotion" slant has already been touched on, I'd like to chime in and tell about the success we had in promoting Ignite Salt Lake 1 last Fall almost exclusively (and quite last minute) on twitter. The other organizers and I tweeted about the event daily and started getting tweets from folks interested in speaking, volunteering etc. I ended up with a bunch of great speakers, and new friends. When the day of the event came we were surprised to have over 100 people there, more than we expected for our first Ignite.

True Story of a Twitter Marriage Proposal
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/...

100 homeless people in LA are dry in the rain with the help of twitter

• @hardlynormal tweets about homelessness frequently


• @holycowcreative had an idea


• the twitterverse helped


• the coats were shipped


• @hardlynormal handed out the coats

Twitter brings me joy daily from the out-loud laughter I experience while reading the twitters of the funny ones.

Hey Ev,

Jason Calacanis recently started a twitter meme called #empathyday, with the goal being to say something nice to at least three people on twitter. It gained a lot of traction and made the Recent Trends list on search.twitter.com for quite a while throughout the day.

It made me and a lot of others appreciate and spread the love, rather than complain about the day or other people/things, etc.

I was with my family in Thailand last November when protesters shut down the main international airport. As we were trying to figure our way out of the country with the airport closed, I was tweeting updates -- would we drive out to Seam Riep in Cambodia? Or maybe take a bus to Kuala Lumpur? A friend who I work with saw the tweets and sent me a text telling me to get in touch with a security manager in Hong Kong at the firm where we both work. I dropped that guy a note on a Sunday, and 20 minutes later he was talking to me on the phone, explaining options and assuring me of his team's assistance, should the situation deteriorate further. It completely reassured my family, and I never would have connected with him if I hadn't been tweeting my predicament.

Hi Ev, i wanted to share my story with you. I have studied pandemics and infectious disease for the past 11 years. I have actively been a preparedness activist for the last 5 years. The incredible difficulty that I have had over the years is having a tool to communicate the risks ahead with others. Twitter is the answer that I have searched and searched for. So thank YOU and your team for saving lives. I merely stand on the shoulders of others. :-)

Kudos

~Catherine @StandingFirmCM

Hey Evan,

One of my favorite bands, Phish, is reuniting in Hampton, VA for a 3 night stand in March for the first time in 6 years. All hotels were sold out due to the concert and there were a few other conferences in town. Not a big place as you can imagine. My friend searched for "phish hotels in hampton" on search.twitter.com about this problem and found a random user tweet informing her to call a hotel and give a special code provided to attendees of one of the other conferences. She called the hotel back, told a white lie and she got a room!

Twitter beat Google on this one!

twitter.com/dyada07
San Francisco, CA

Just before the end of last year, someone I follow on Twitter was in a bad car accident and twittered about the aftermath in real time reactions. At one point he realized his car was totalled and he didn't have money to pay for a new one. Many of us following were touched by his story and gave enough money for him to put a down payment on a new (used) car. If you want a more in depth look at this story, here's the blog I wrote about it at the time: http://snurl.com/7pee2

Mike McClure
Twitter: mikekmcclure

@ev, as a small business, with zero marketing or pr dollars, Twitter has helped launch our product, Action Wipes (www.actionwipes.com) from obscurity to international recognition. Not sure how Twitter worked when I first joined in June 2008 (http://bit.ly/WcR1), I began using it in earnest on September 4 and immediately started receiving DM’s such as “Just had a look around your site for Action Wipes. Do you have a UK distributor / can we talk about this??” Since then, our on-line sales have increased 80% and we have developed partnership opportunities and amazing friendships along the way. Because of the bonds we’ve formed with our followers, we just recently won the Shorty Award for Brand (www.shortyawards.com). While the awards are not a Twitter sponsored event, they show how Twitter can bring people together and spur discussions. We’re forever grateful to Twitter! Warmly, @marthavan

Not a story per se, but an interesting use, for a big event...

http://tinyurl.com/aduqlw

Last month on the morning of a big meeting I had in the afternoon, I spilled coffee on my shirt. I never do that!

I even almost didn't tweet it, but I did, just to be a little self-deprecating. Two minutes later, @smurgel dropped off a Tide-to-Go pen for me, saying "Let's see if Twitter can save the day." (We work together and she actually turned me on to Twitter.)

Lo and behold, the stain came out, my shirt was saved and the meeting went well.

Thank you Twitter.

http://twitter.com/lunarboy/statuses/...
http://twitter.com/lunarboy/status/11...
http://twitter.com/smurgel/status/110...

These stories are so inspiring!! I love how twitter is helping bring people together. Personally, Twitter has helped me reach a larger audience and has aided the sales of a few of my retro fine art images. I've also met so many interesting people and made a few great contacts within the photography industry. Thanks Twitter. :)

Here was one of the referrals/messages I received that sparked a sale: "Hi there! I saw your photography after one of my twitter buddies, JoelGunz posted your link. I LOVE the picture of the Ballons for my daughter's nursery!"

~Jena Ardell~
http://twitter.com/jenaardell

The Second Coming of Nefertiti has become a member on twitter! (ME)LOL I was Eve, Nefertiti, and Mary Magdalene and I bring with me the Messiah. Twitter is helping me meet friends to help me bring forth the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth. www.momafortune.com Google me momafortune a.k.a. Tonisha Fortune check out my videos on youtube LOL-momafortune1. Twitter: momafortune.

watch my updates on twitter. It started as a marketing idea which is now (fingers crossed) going to be on Channel 4. Cant say anymore for the moment... @lizstualanna (www.leicestershireshow.co.uk)

Nobody gave me feedback on an app idea I worked up six months ago (tried a direct to you!). I can't take it further - lack of technical skill, confidence and money - so I've just started twittering about it - 'thinki' just one tweet at a time.

http://twitter.com/mochj

Thanks everyone! I appreciate your sharing.