Twitter for a Cause: Twittering with a Heart

Since joining Twitter I have seen the power of live networking in a really different style. Twitter isn't instant messaging. It isn't emailing or full blogging either. Twitter is more of a 140 character count mini-blog. People tweet in short messages. They advertise their businesses. They link to all kinds of sites ranging from blogs to publishing companies, from artists to politicians and everything and everybody else in between. They share snippets of their lives and workplaces. It is an interesting concept that is taking off. But one thing it can also do is to become a venue for something outside of ourselves. You can Twitter for a cause. You can Twitter with a heart.

Twittering is limited to 140characters for each message sent. You add the people who interest you or who have some connection to people you know. There are even celebrities and well known faces there which sort of surprised me. It is interesting to find a little more out about these faces that often flood our media, but on a much more human level.

Levar Burton is there, interesting man. He is trying to quit smoking. I will gladly cheer on that attempt. He has a son he is very proud of, who I am betting would like to have his dad around for a lot longer than I had my mother. She died from illnesses caused by smoking, far too young, If this one Twitterer can say, "Go for it Levar, You can do it", then you bet I will. Call it a Twitter cause or call it being a cheerleader for getting people to stop smoking, or just one Twitter human being reaching out to another one. He doesn't know me from Adam, but I will gladly cheer him on.

This past week Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, who are on my Twitter follow list, put up a Twitter message about a young friend of theirs who is ill. The link to a site that spoke about him was included. Always the curious reader, I clicked on the link. It then struck me that Twitter could be a resource for all kinds of good causes too. I have since seen Twitters about missing children and people who need prayers. It's a powerful way to use Twitter, that steps one step up from the norm. Ashton and Demi's young friend and family were touched by the response from all these Twitter strangers. I left a message for Logan Laack on the site. Sometimes a few human words given from the heart can make all the difference in lifting a spirit enough to fight to heal. It was only a few words, but it felt nice to be able to do that for someone else.

There is a human touch in Twitter. It is live advertising that can be shut off or hyped up, paid attention to or ignored, but more than anything it is a venue for opening up another whole style of communication online.
I joined Twitter to find yet another way to expand my writing, to find resources for publication, to share my little piece of existence and writing and to learn about others, to reach out. I love to explore. I like people, from all walks of life. An added bonus turned out to be that Twitter is a resource for more ideas for my writing. Who would have guessed?

Oh, and I already won a prize from a business that ran a Twitter contest, a pair of crafting beader's crimping pliers from @foxyfindings, who advertises for her beader's website http://www.foxyfindings.com/store/home.php . They arrived in the post a few days later.(Nice site by the way. Take a look if you do beadwork.)

Twitter is also a place to reach out and sign a guest book of a young guy and say a prayer hoping he recovers. I put him on my prayer list at church too. I will probably never meet him or these people I follow, everyone from regular every day people to celebrities like Demi and Ashton, Levar and Cleese, and a bit of Fry and...Laurie. (Oh you know I couldn't resist that reference.) I'm Laurie,@Dreamweaverr at Twitter, but who knows maybe the @REALLaurie will join Twitter soon too. Why not, the governor of California is on my follow list too. (I wonder if I can rant in 140 characters or less to him.)

Anyone can join Twitter. It is an incredibly easy site to learn. Come and Twitter for a cause and make someone smile. Pass on a tweet or Retweet as it is called there to help someone else in their career or their personal life. It's an easy way to pass along a kindness, to Twitter for a cause. I dare you not to get hooked when you join. It's really fun. I think I am up to 1,300 followers who are following little me. Care to make it one more?