I never thought of myself as much of a blog or Twitter person. Yes, I have a personal blog where I vent and write about issues that are important to me. And yes, I have a Twitter account where I would tweet maybe once every two months. However, when I started this class, doing these weekly blogs and tweeting has gotten me excited for what’s to come. It has gotten me excited because personalized social media is creating such an awareness of things around the world. And now, Twitter has come to save the world, one person at a time.

In a recent Mashable.com article I was reading, Underheard in New York, an initiative created to raise homeless awareness, has brought the magic of Twitter to these men.

Four men were picked to start tweeting about their lives in the real world. They were given a cell phone, unlimited texting and a Twitter account.

The goal is to showcase the huge challenges the homeless community faces and by giving these men the opportunity to tweet, they are giving them a voice that they have long craved for. According to the mentioned Mashable article, homelessness in New York has increased by 34 percent in the past year alone.

Although these men are operating on inexpensive phones and aren’t making money off this project, they are being given a chance to explore technology as they have never before. Twitter is paving the way to do big things. But all those big things start small.

Happy reading.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Tech Blogs.  Tagged Homelessness, Social Media, Twitter, Underheard in New York 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.