Twitter usage
Encyclopedia
Ever since the inception of Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 on July 15, 2006, there has been many notable uses for the service, in a variety of environments.

In Policing

Many police officers use Twitter to provide details on their daily rountine and appeals for information regarding crimes they or their organisation is investigating in an attempt to widen the number of people being reached by these appeals.

In May 2011 the innovative website tweetathief was launched, which uses numerous social networks along side a Twitter app to allow people to post lost, missing, found, stolen pets, people, and items. The site also allows police or other organisations to register and broadcast appeals to information to these social networks.

In legal proceedings

The first criminal prosecution arising from Twitter posts was started in April 2009. FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

 agents arrested Daniel Knight Hayden, who was accused of sending threatening tweets in connection with his plan to attend a Tea Party protest in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Oklahoma City is the capital and the largest city in the state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, the city ranks 31st among United States cities in population. The city's population, from the 2010 census, was 579,999, with a metro-area population of 1,252,987 . In 2010, the Oklahoma...

.

In July 2009, Horizon Realty Group, a Chicago real estate management company, sued a former tenant
Horizon Group v. Bonnen
Horizon Group v. Bonnen was a libel suit brought by Horizon Realty Group, a Chicago real estate management company, against one of its former tenants, Amanda Bonnen, in Cook County Circuit Court. This case has received extensive publicity and touches on issues such as consumer protection, limits of...

, Amanda Bonnen, for libel based on a Twitter message she sent to friends. Horizon contended that Bonnen defamed Horizon by posting a tweet to her friends that said, "You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's ok." Horizon asked for at least $50,000 for the alleged libel. The lawsuit prompted widespread comment from journalists, bloggers, and legal experts. In January 2010, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane J. Larsen granted Bonnen's motion to dismiss, stating that the statement was "too vague" to amount to defamation.

In education

The Distance College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University or SJTU), sometimes referred to as Shanghai Jiaotong University , is a top public research university located in Shanghai, China. Shanghai Jiao Tong University is known as one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China...

, China, used Twitter with native Chinese students to train communicative and cultural competence. Students had to post a number of English tweets and react to the tweets of their fellow students. Twitter was viewed as a supplement to practice different aspects of the target language in authentic environment.

The University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, Austria, used Twitter as an evaluation platform for student ratings
Course evaluation
A course evaluation is a paper or electronic questionnaire, which requires a written or selected response answer to a series of questions in order to evaluate the instruction of a given course...

. Every student had to send a tweet after each course unit with feedback to the teacher. Twitter's simplicity and electronic data handling required small administrative effort and turned out to be "a useful tool for evaluating a course formatively".

At the University of Texas at Dallas
University of Texas at Dallas
The University of Texas at Dallas, also referred to as UT Dallas or UTD, is a public research university in the University of Texas System. The main campus is in the heart of the Richardson, Texas, Telecom Corridor, north of downtown Dallas...

, Twitter has been incorporated into the classroom setting of History courses with big groups of students. This allows more students to express their views in the class discussions and forces them to focus on the central point due to the character limit.

According to telegraph.co.uk, Twitter is put on the new primary school curriculum. Children should be able to "organise and adjust" speaking and writing skills depending on the technology being used, including using "emails, messaging, wikis and twitters". During the primary years, children should also be taught to speak, write and broadcast using "blogs, podcasts, websites, email [and] video".

In 2009, higher education faculty began using Twitter to help establish social presence and just-in-time interaction with students that are not bound by a learning management system.

In emergencies

Research reported in New Scientist
New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...

 in May 2008 found that blogs, maps, photo sites and instant messaging systems like Twitter did a better job of getting information out during emergencies than either the traditional news media or government emergency services. The study also found that those using Twitter during the fires in California in October 2007 kept their followers (who were often friends and neighbors) informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires minute by minute. Relief effort organizations are also using Twitter. The American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...

 started using Twitter to exchange minute-to-minute information about local disasters including statistics and directions.

During the 2008 Mumbai attacks
2008 Mumbai attacks
The 2008 Mumbai attacks were more than 10 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India's largest city, by Islamist attackers who came from Pakistan...

, eyewitnesses sent an estimated 16 tweets every second. Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals needing blood donations. CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

 called this "the day that social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...

 appeared to come of age" since many different groups made significant use of Twitter to gather news and coordinate responses.

In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549
US Airways Flight 1549
US Airways Flight 1549 was US Airways' scheduled domestic commercial passenger flight from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, Charlotte, North Carolina...

 experienced multiple bird strike
Bird strike
A bird strike—sometimes called birdstrike, avian ingestion , bird hit, or BASH —is a collision between an airborne animal and a man-made vehicle, especially aircraft...

s and had to land in water
Water landing
A water landing is, in the broadest sense, any landing on a body of water. All waterfowl, those seabirds capable of flight, and some human-built vehicles are capable of landing in water as a matter of course....

 in the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...

. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferries that rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating and sent it to Twitpic
Twitpic
TwitPic is a website that allows users to easily post pictures to the Twitter microblogging and social media service. TwitPic is often used by citizen journalists to upload and distribute pictures in near real-time as an event is taking place.-History:...

 before any other media arrived at the scene. For this he won the Shorty Award
Shorty Awards
The Shorty Awards, also known as the Shorties, are an awards event that honors top short-form content creators on the micro-blogging website Twitter. The awards have primarily been sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and are organized by the co-founders of the Brooklyn-based...

 for Real-Time Photo of the Year.

The Victorian Country Fire Authority
Country Fire Authority
Country Fire Authority, or CFA, is the name of the fire service that provides firefighting and other emergency services to all of the country areas and regional townships within the state of Victoria, Australia, as well as large portions of the outer suburban areas and growth corridors of Melbourne...

 in Australia used Twitter to send out regular alerts and updates regarding the February 2009 bushfires. The then Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd
Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...

 used his Twitter account to send out information on the fires, how to donate money and blood, and where to seek emergency help.

In April 2009, public health departments used Twitter to provide updates on H1N1
H1N1
'Influenza A virus is a subtype of influenza A virus and was the most common cause of human influenza in 2009. Some strains of H1N1 are endemic in humans and cause a small fraction of all influenza-like illness and a small fraction of all seasonal influenza. H1N1 strains caused a few percent of...

 cases.

Used to survey opinion

During the CBC News
CBC News
CBC News is the department within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on CBC television, radio and online services...

 television coverage of the Canadian federal election on October 14, 2008 the CBC cited tweets regarding Elizabeth May
Elizabeth May
Elizabeth Evans May, OC, MP is an American-born Canadian Member of Parliament, environmentalist, writer, activist, lawyer, and the leader of the Green Party of Canada. She was the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada from 1989 to 2006. She became a Canadian citizen in 1978.May's...

 and Stéphane Dion
Stéphane Dion
Stéphane Maurice Dion, PC, MP is a Canadian politician who has been the Member of Parliament for the riding of Saint-Laurent–Cartierville in Montreal since 1996. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and the Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons from 2006 to 2008...

 along with a graph of items mentioned on Twitter as evidence that people were calling for Dion to step down in response to the election results.

As of April 26, 2010, the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n television program Q&A
Q&A (TV program)
Q&A is an Australian television program, broadcast on ABC1 hosted by award-winning news journalist Tony Jones. It is similar to shows like Question Time on the BBC and Questions and Answers on RTÉ....

 began showing selected tweets on screen during the live broadcast, which carried the hashtag "#qanda".

In campaigning

Twitter was used by candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...

 throughout the race. Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 nominee Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 used it for publicity. The Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....

Gonzalez
Matt Gonzalez
Matthew Edward Gonzalez is an American politician, lawyer, and activist prominent in San Francisco politics. He currently serves as chief attorney in the San Francisco Public Defender's office....

 campaign updated its ballot access teams in real time with Twitter and Google Maps
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...

. Twitter use increased by 43% on the day of the United States 2008 election.

In 2009, the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 set up 33 fake Twitter accounts in the names of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 members of the state legislature. The Republicans used the accounts to send out tweets in the names of the Democrats. When Twitter discovered the scheme, it shut down the fake accounts, quoting the applicable company policy. The Hartford Courant
The Hartford Courant
The Hartford Courant is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is a morning newspaper for most of the state north of New Haven and east of Waterbury...

 editorialized: "Republicans get an A for innovation but a D for ethics."

During the 2010 federal election campaign in Australia, the New South Wales Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell publicly tweeted comments about the Liberal party's readiness for the election, thinking he was sending a private message to a journalist.

Introduction to Twitter and politics

The social networking site is used for a multitude of reasons and one of them is connecting and impacting the public.

One of Twitter’s mission statements is, “At Twitter, we believe that the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact.” People around the world have taken this idea, using the 140-character tweet to spark an interest or gain attention for a cause or issue.

Politicians have taken this idea and used it to influence their followers and persuade their opponents. Most political leaders or activists have Twitter accounts, which include senators, representatives, activists, and the President. Their tweets consist of information about current events and where they stand on key issues. To get all the current tweets of politicians a good website is http://www.politicstweet.com/.

By politicians taking advantage of this social media, they have opened the door for an interactive government, where people can directly make statements and ask questions to those in government. Twitter has broadened the horizon for those who aren’t politically savvy. It allows a younger generation to get more actively involved and voice their concerns directly.

Twitter has opened up communication between civilians and politicians, but that’s all it does. In other words, talk is cheap. It is impossible for political leaders to read and respond to every tweet especially someone like President Obama who has over three million followers. It has changed the way politicians address the public and how people get their information, but not necessarily what action these leaders take.

The fact that Twitter is available to basically everyone has enabled it to have powerful impact on how people acquire information.
Politicians used to gain recognition via televisions, newspaper articles, and radio, but now they are entering a time where social media is dominant.

The social media network's large reach around the world has led to a change of the inner workings of politics. Politicians are able to tweet to their followers about their points of view on important issues that can potentially affect an entire country. They are now able to reach a larger audience, but on a smaller platform, since there is a 140-character limit on tweets.

Twitter and politics today

During the 13th Federal Assembly in May 2009, two members of the German Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

 leaked the result of the German presidential election
German presidential election, 2009
An indirect presidential election was held in Germany on 23 May 2009. The President of Germany was elected by the Federal Assembly, which is made up of the members of the Bundestag and an equal number of members nominated by the state Landtags....

 via Twitter before the President of the Bundestag
President of the Bundestag
The President of the Bundestag presides over the sessions of the Bundestag, the parliament of Germany, with functions similar to that of a speaker in other countries. In the German order of precedence, his office is ranked second after the President and before the Chancellor...

 officially announced Horst Köhler
Horst Köhler
Horst Köhler is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union. He was President of Germany from 2004 to 2010. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, and the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Assembly on...

 as the winner.
In June 2009, following the allegations of fraud in the Iranian presidential election
Iranian presidential election, 2009
Iran's tenth presidential election was held on 12 June 2009, with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running against three challengers. The next morning the Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official news agency, announced that with two-thirds of the votes counted, Ahmadinejad had won the election...

, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool and method of communication with the outside world after the government blocked several other modes of communication. On June 15, 2009, Twitter rescheduled a planned 90-minute maintenance outage after a number of Twitter users and the US State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

 asked Twitter executives to delay the shutdown because of concerns about the service's role as a primary communication medium by the protesters in Iran. CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

's coverage of the conflict was criticized in tweets with the hashtag "#CNNfail". Twitter was also used to organize DDoS attacks against Iranian government websites.

In August 2009, when American opponents of President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's health insurance reform proposals
Health care reform in the United States
Health care reform in the United States has a long history, of which the most recent results were two federal statutes enacted in 2010: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act , signed March 23, 2010, and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 , which amended the PPACA and...

 attacked the British National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...

, thousands of NHS users took part in a Twitter campaign expressing their support for the NHS with use of the "#welovetheNHS" hashtag. The hashtag was initiated by Irish
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

 comedy writer Graham Linehan
Graham Linehan
Graham Linehan is an Irish television writer, actor, comedian and director who, often in partnership with Arthur Mathews, has written or co-written a number of popular television comedies...

, who said he wanted to use a Twitter campaign "as a counterweight against the lies of the American right". The campaign also received the support of several politicians including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...

.

New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 activist Elliot Madison used Twitter to message an order to disperse from the Pittsburgh police during the 2009 G-20 Pittsburgh protests. Police raided Madison's hotel room, and one week later Madison's New York home was raided by FBI agents, who conducted a sixteen-hour search. Police claim Madison and a co-defendant used computers and a radio scanner to track police movements and then passed on that information to protesters using cell phones and Twitter. Madison is being charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possession of instruments of crime. The FBI collected miscellany such as refrigerator magnets, and a Curious George stuffed animal, despite that the warrant issued asked for evidence that indicated potential violations of federal rioting laws. In light of the United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

's recent public support of Twitter use in the politics of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

, and Honduras
Honduras
Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

, it is asked whether the State Department supports free speech in the United States.

In October 2009, after The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

 newspaper was served with an injunction banning it from reporting on a parliamentary matter, it published a cryptic article with the few details it was allowed to report. The paper claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights". The paper's editor Alan Rusbridger
Alan Rusbridger
Alan Charles Rusbridger is the editor of the British newspaper The Guardian. He has also been a reporter and a columnist.-Early life:...

 credited Twitter users with taking the initiative to provide details that the press was not allowed to print, namely, that the injunction was taken out by the London solicitor Carter-Ruck
Peter Carter-Ruck
Peter Frederick Carter-Ruck was an English lawyer, specialising in libel cases. The firm he founded, Carter-Ruck, is still practising.-Personal life:...

 on behalf of commodities trader Trafigura
Trafigura
Trafigura is an Amsterdam-based multinational company founded in 1993 trading in base metals and energy, including oil. the company had equity of more than $2 billion and a turnover of $73 billion that generated $440 million of profit....

, who did not want public discussion of the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal and the resulting Minton Report (available on Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

 ). The reporting injunction was withdrawn by Carter-Ruck the next day before The Guardian could challenge it in the High Court. Rusbridger credited the rapid back-down of Carter-Ruck to Twitter, as did a BBC article; the Wikipedia Reference Desk also quickly figured out what the cryptic article referred to.

Twitter came to the attention of the Canadian House of Commons
Canadian House of Commons
The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 308 members known as Members of Parliament...

 in October 2009 when Member of Parliament Ujjal Dosanjh
Ujjal Dosanjh
Ujjal Dev Singh Dosanjh, PC, QC, is a Sikh Canadian lawyer and politician. He served as 33rd Premier of British Columbia from 2000 to 2001 and as a Liberal Party of Canada Member of Parliament from 2004 to 2011 including a stint as Minister of Health from 2004 until 2006 when the party lost...

 apologized on the floor for improperly "tweeting about matters that ought not to have been tweeted about" during "in camera" proceedings of a parliamentary committee.

In October 2009, Twitter once again came to the attention of the Canadian public when Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

 Councilor Andrea Reimer
Andrea Reimer
Andrea Reimer is a Canadian politician, currently serving on Vancouver, British Columbia'sCity Council. She was first elected in 2002 to the Vancouver School Board as a Green Party candidate. She was defeated as a Green Party candidate in her re-election campaign in 2005 and then joined the Vision...

 tweeted regarding the British Columbia Minister of Housing and Social Development Rich Coleman
Rich Coleman
Rich Coleman is British Columbia's Minister of Energy and Mines, minister responsible for Housing and MLA for the riding of Fort Langley-Aldergrove...

's weight in response to provincial legislation proposed by Coleman to bring homeless people to shelters during extreme weather. Reimer posted that instead of police bringing homeless people to shelters during extreme weather that she was thinking of introducing legislation to have the police bring Coleman to Jenny Craig, an international weight loss company, on his next visit to Vancouver. Coleman responded by calling the comment amateurish and from a Councilor that "doesn't know any better." Reimer later apologized for the posting.
In December 2009, Supreme Federal Court of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 became the first court
Court
A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law...

 in the world to display items on the day planner
Day Planner
Day Planner is a late morning-early afternoon weather forecast program airing on The Weather Channel.-Program history:Day Planner was added in 2003 as one of the last programs to be added to The Weather Channel's morning programming block...

 of the ministers, to inform the actions that arrive daily to the Court, and the most important decisions made by them on Twitter.

In late December 2009, the Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 non-profit organization
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 Interenet-Ukraine launched a project aimed at monitoring 2010 Ukrainian presidential election
Ukrainian presidential election, 2010
The Ukrainian presidential election of 2010 is Ukraine's fifth presidential election since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The first round was held on January 17, 2010...

 based on Twitter.

On April 22, 2010, during the United Kingdom general election, 2010, several right-wing British newspapers including the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

, the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...

, and The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...

 reported several news stories regarding the leader of the Liberal Democrats
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...

 Nick Clegg
Nick Clegg
Nicholas William Peter "Nick" Clegg is a British Liberal Democrat politician who is currently the Deputy Prime Minister, Lord President of the Council and Minister for Constitutional and Political Reform in the coalition government of which David Cameron is the Prime Minister...

, including political donations made to his private bank account, and making a Nazi slur. This was seen by users on Twitter as a personal attack on Clegg on the day that the second Prime Ministerial television debate was to take place after he performed well in the first. In response to the articles, Twitter users set up the hashtag "#nickcleggsfault", in which people made ironic comments claiming the Clegg was to blame for everything wrong in the world. Some also criticised the Daily Mail's article on Clegg's Nazi slur was based on an article that Clegg wrote in November 2002 in which, "he criticises attitudes to Germany which seem stuck in the 1950s — and fail to recognise how it has reinvented itself since", and made references to the Daily Mail's support for Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 in the 1930s. By midday on 22 April, the "#nickcleggsfault" was the second-most tweeted hashtag on Twitter globally, second to Earth Day
Earth Day
Earth Day is a day that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. The first Proclamation of Earth Day was by San Francisco, the...

, and the most tweeted hashtag in the United Kingdom.

New Developments for Politicians on Twitter

On September 21, 2011 Twitter started to allow politicians to advertise via Twitter. In an article on venturebeat.com, Jolie O’Dell informed the public that they will be seeing a new type of Tweet, “Politically flavored Promoted Tweets will be designated by a purple icon in the bottom left corner of the tweet.” This new feature is being implemented because of the importance Twitter has had in the past election in 2008 and 2010.

Twitter will be big part of the 2012 election, which lead the company to hire of Peter Greenberg, a former Google employee who ran their political ad sales in 2008. According to the article, “Candidates and national political committees will be able to purchase any of Twitter’s ad products, including Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trend.”

“About 85 U.S. Senators use Twitter, and 360 members of the House of Representatives also have accounts. The vast majority of state governors — 42 of 50 — are on Twitter, too. And of course, all the current major presidential contenders are using the microblogging service.” In return, it makes sense that Twitter is incorporating this into its social network.

In public relations

In Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is a ministerial department of the United Kingdom Government created on 5 June 2009 by the merger of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform .-Ministers:The BIS...

 released a Twitter strategy document written for other departments. The strategy advised the departments on why Twitter was used by the Government and how they could tweet and promote their doing so effectively. The ICAEW suggested that the document could also be useful to the private sector
Private sector
In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...

 or as a general introduction to Twitter.

In the United States a number of environment agencies and NGOs are using Twitter. At the local level, police and fire departments are beginning to use Twitter to keep the public informed of incidents. Some of these departments, such as the Los Angeles Fire Department
Los Angeles Fire Department
The Los Angeles Fire Department is the agency that provides fire protection and emergency medical services for the city of Los Angeles....

, issue up to 10 tweets per day.

In October 2008, a draft U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

 intelligence report identified Twitter as a "potential terrorist tool". The report said it "is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives."

David Saranga
David Saranga
David Saranga is an Israeli diplomat and former Consul for Media and Public Affairs of Israel in the United States. Saranga was responsible for Israel’s image in the United States and was the liaison person of Israel to the American media...

 of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on December 30, 2008, that Israel would be the first government to hold a worldwide press conference via Twitter to take questions from the public about the war against Hamas in Gaza.

In reporting dissent

On April 10, 2008, James Buck, a graduate journalism student at University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested in Egypt for photographing a protest against the Egyptian authority's detention of protestors. On his way to the police station Buck used his mobile phone to send the message "Arrested" to his 48 Twitter followers. Those followers contacted U.C. Berkeley, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, and a number of press organizations on his behalf. Buck was able to send updates about his condition to his followers while being detained. He was released the next day from the Mahalla jail after the college hired a lawyer for him.

On April 7, 2009, thousands of students stormed the presidency and the parliament building in Chişinău
Chisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...

, the capital of Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

, accusing the government of electoral fraud. Information about these events was disseminated through Twitter using hashtag "#pman", from the name of the central square in Chişinău: Piaţa Marii Adunări Naţionale. Twitter was also used to mobilize
Mass mobilization
Mass mobilization refers to mobilization of civilian population as part of contentious politics. Mass mobilization is often used by grassroots-based social movements, including revolutionary movements, but can also become a tool of elites and the state itself...

 the protests.

In space mission news

In February 2009, NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 won a Shorty Award
Shorty Awards
The Shorty Awards, also known as the Shorties, are an awards event that honors top short-form content creators on the micro-blogging website Twitter. The awards have primarily been sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and are organized by the co-founders of the Brooklyn-based...

 for its near real-time status updates in 2008 of the unmanned Mars Phoenix Lander mission.

In May 2009, astronaut Mike Massimino
Michael J. Massimino
Michael James Massimino is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. Mike is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions, both of which serviced the Hubble Space Telescope , including the historic final repair mission.-Personal life:...

 used Twitter to send updates during the Hubble Space Telescope
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...

 repair mission
STS-125
STS-125, or HST-SM4 , was the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope .Launch occurred on 11 May 2009 at 2:01 pm EDT...

 (STS-125), the first time Twitter was used by an astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

 in space. The STS-125 mission marked another NASA/Twitter first — a post-mission tweetup
NASA Tweetup
NASA has hosted many events for its Twitter enthusiasts called NASA Tweetups. These events provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach requirements of NASA as laid out in the National Aeronautics...

 held July 21, 2009, at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, attended by about 200 members of the general public. The crew of STS-125 was on hand for answer questions.

On October 21, 2009, Nicole Stott and her Expedition 21 crewmate Jeff Williams participated in the first tweetup
NASA Tweetup
NASA has hosted many events for its Twitter enthusiasts called NASA Tweetups. These events provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach requirements of NASA as laid out in the National Aeronautics...

 from the International Space Station
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...

 with about 35 members of the public at NASA headquarters. This involved the first live Twitter connection for the astronauts. Previously, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle or ISS had sent the messages to Mission Control which then posted the messages via the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 to Twitter.

In November 2009, the launch of STS-129
STS-129
-Crew seat assignments:-Mission payload:-ExPRESS Logistics Carriers 1 and 2:The primary payload of STS-129 was the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier and the ELC-2. The mass capacity of each ELC is with a volume of 30 meters cubed...

 marked NASA's fifth tweetup, and its first such event ever held during a Shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center
The John F. Kennedy Space Center is the NASA installation that has been the launch site for every United States human space flight since 1968. Although such flights are currently on hiatus, KSC continues to manage and operate unmanned rocket launch facilities for America's civilian space program...

 in Cape Canaveral, Florida
Cape Canaveral, Florida
Cape Canaveral is a city in Brevard County, Florida, United States. The population was 8,829 at the 2000 census. As of 2008, the estimated population according to the U.S. Census Bureau was 10,147...

. One hundred members of the general public, representing Morocco, New Zealand, and 21 U.S. states, in addition to the District of Columbia, attended the two-day event and, for a time, the "#nasatweetup" hashtag reached #3 on Twitter's Trending Topics.

In May 2010, NASA organized a tweetup for the STS-132
STS-132
STS-132 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission, during which Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station on 16 May 2010. STS-132 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on 14 May 2010. The primary payload was the Russian Rassvet Mini-Research Module, along with an Integrated...

 Space Shuttle Atlantis
Space Shuttle Atlantis
The Space Shuttle Atlantis is a retired Space Shuttle orbiter in the Space Shuttle fleet belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration , the spaceflight and space exploration agency of the United States...

 mission to the International Space Station
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...

.

In business

Twitter is increasingly being used as a business promotional tool. Twitter encourages this through "Twitter 101", a web-based tutorial aimed at business users. For example, one of the notable business Twitter users is Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...

, which reported $9m of its 2009 sales coming directly through Twitter and Facebook combined. It has been argued that smaller businesses also benefit from using Twitter, since they can compete on equal terms with larger businesses within the Twitter platform. In the UK, a survey indicated that 17% of small British businesses were using Twitter, mainly to attract new customers.

However, increased use of social networking sites has provoked concern about privacy in the workplace, and the protection of company data. A survey of 1,400 chief information officer
Chief information officer
Chief information officer , or information technology director, is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals...

s also revealed concerns about the potential for employee distraction, if they were given unlimited access to social networking sites such as Twitter.

Twitter started showing advertising to users on April 13, 2010 in the company's first significant attempt to turn its microblogging service into a profitable business.

In fundraising

Fundraising campaigns have been held on Twitter, where users are encouraged to tweet about and donate to a particular cause for a specified period of time. This is sometimes known as a "Tweet-a-thon", which is a portmanteau of the words "tweet" and "marathon
Marathon
The marathon is a long-distance running event with an official distance of 42.195 kilometres , that is usually run as a road race...

".

Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging started the 12for12K tweet-a-thon along with Danny Brown, founder of the organization 12for12K. 12for12K is an organization that combines social media and raising funds to impact and change the lives of millions worldwide. It first began in 2009 and uses social media platforms to run events for different charity each month to meet their goal of $12,000 within a twelve hour time frame. In order to participate, one follows the #12for12K hashtag and re-tweets about the tweet-a-thon. For every twelve dollars donated, one is entered into a raffle with varying prizes. One hundred percent of the donation is given to the specified charity. In result, Stratten started a tweet-a-thon for the charity Share Our Strength. He was able to raise $12,000 within five and half hours of the twelve hour period. In the end of the twelve hour period he was able to raise $15,500. During the tweet-a-thon, traffic for 12for12K.org increased by 4000%. On the website a Twitter avatar frame helped bring in 3,600 followers. In 2009, 12for12K.org raised $91,275 for Share Our Strength and several other charities.

The UK non-profit sector used Twitter to update supporters and potential donors when user BigDaveSB used hashtag "#charitytuesday", for which he later shared in a Justgiving
Justgiving
JustGiving is a private for-profit company formed in 2000 for the administration of charitable donations. The company's website provides online fundraising tools to enable the electronic collection of donations.- Details :...

 Award 2010 for innovative fundraising, using Twitter to keep supporters up to date with regard to progress in a charity jailbreak.

Sue Black
Sue Black (computer scientist)
Dr Sue Black FBCS FRSA is an English computer scientist. She is a Senior Research Associate at University College London, England. Previously she was Head of the Department of Information and Software Systems at the University of Westminster, London. Sue Black founded BCSWomen, a Specialist Group...

 and others have used Twitter and other social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...

 to raise the profile and funding for Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...

.

In June 2010, Onlineshoes.com and Saucony
Saucony
Saucony is an American manufacturer of athletic shoes, best-known today for its premium running shoes and men's and women's apparel.-History:...

 collaborated to raise awareness and funds for childhood obesity through a tweet-a-thon. For every tweet, Onlineshoes.com donated a dollar to Saucony's "Run for Good" program, a grant program for encouraging active and healthy lifestyles for children.

In news reporting

In September 2010 Twitter was a key stream of communication by the media inside a Connecticut courtroom during the Cheshire, Connecticut, home invasion murders trial.

While video cameras were not allowed, Connecticut State Supreme Court Judge Jon C. Blue allowed electronic devices for text transmission during the Stephen Hayes trial. Hayes was convicted of the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley and Michaela and sentenced to death
Capital punishment in the United States
Capital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...

. His alleged accomplice, Joshua Komisarjevsky, is scheduled to stand trial for the murders in February 2011.

While a few news organizations in other parts of the country have live blogged for years, this was the first high profile case in Connecticut in which Twitter played an important role in keeping those interested in the court proceedings updated with information from the courtroom with the use of Twitter.

A second notable example was news organisations - including ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 News, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

, BSkyB - using Twitter during the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April 2011. ABC News’ Tweet tracker was shown on screen, wwith total Tweets about the royal wedding as well as Tweets per minute.

A Pew Research study indicated, however, that the vast majority of news outlets (93%) use Twitter as a means of promoting their sites vs sharing other relevant news and stories.

In entertainment news reporting

Twitter is also used by many celebrities and others in the entertainment industry (news magazines, journalists, entertainment news shows, etc...) as a way to personally connect with fans, promote projects, and break news. Celebrity tweets are often subjects of headline news and sometimes used by the mainstream media and several news outlets as a primary source for confirming information pertaining to a particular story about a celebrity. CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

 Breaking News, E!
E!
E! Entertainment Television is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by NBCUniversal. It features entertainment-related programming, reality television, feature films and occasionally series and specials unrelated to the entertainment industry.E! has an audience reach of...

 Online, Perez Hilton
Perez Hilton
Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr. , better known as Perez Hilton , is an American blogger and television personality. His blog, Perezhilton.com , is known for posts covering gossip items about celebrities...

, and People Magazine are a few entertainment news outlets that have millions of Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 followers. In June 2010, 24-year-old actress Amanda Bynes
Amanda Bynes
Amanda Laura Bynes is an American actress, comedian, singer, and fashion designer. Bynes appeared in several successful television series, such as All That and The Amanda Show, on Nickelodeon in the mid to late 1990s and early 2000s, and in 2002, she starred in the TV series, What I Like About You...

 shocked the entertainment industry by announcing her retirement via twitter. She tweeted "I don't love acting anymore so I've stopped doing it." However, a month later, Bynes announced to her followers that she had "unretired." Various news sources reported on this story, breaking the news directly from the actress's Twitter page. During the 83rd Academy Awards there were 1,269,970 tweets related to the event.

In television

Twitter is used by TV operators and broadcasters to try to encourage viewers to get involved. This can take the form of on-screen hashtags, having celebrities tweet while a show airs, or contests around a TV show. Notable examples include Comedy Central using Twitter hashtags during the Comedy Awards and BBC QuestionTime encouraging political debate. the During the 2011 Oscars, there were over 10,000 tweets per minute- with the event racking up 1.8 million tweets overall. During the 2011 Super Bowl
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...

, tweets peaked at 4,000 per second. In the UK, daily television shows also receive attention on Twitter, although the levels of activity is lower than a major TV event like the Oscars.
However, it is unclear if integrating Twitter-based strategies into broadcasting impacts TV ratings.

In art

British artist James Robert Ford
James Robert Ford
James R Ford is a contemporary British mixed media and installation artist.-Work:Ford's projects include House Gymnastics , Feecal the little chocolate starfish , General Carbuncle and Six Degrees of Smoking...

 started a Twitter-specific art project in 2009 entitled A Tweet a Day. He tweets one word a day from Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson
Tove Marika Jansson was a Swedish-Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. She is best known as the author of the Moomin books.- Biography :...

’s The Moomin Who Believed in Disasters via Twitter user account @JamesRFord. The story recital is expected to finish in 2021. According to Ford, retelling of a child's short story through the microblogging service Twitter emphasises the distribution and delocation of experience.

For pranks

American Duke
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

 basketball player Jon Scheyer
Jon Scheyer
Jonathan James "Jon" Scheyer is an American-Israeli professional basketball player. He plays shooting guard for Maccabi Tel Aviv of the Israeli Super League in that competition, the Adriatic League, and the Euroleague...

 played a prank after his team won the 2010 NCAA basketball championship in April 2010. He tweeted his more than 6,700 Twitter followers to call him on a fake phone number, which belonged to his former high school teammate Zach Kelly. For example, Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

 was taken in by the ruse. After Kelly had received more than 2,000 text messages and several hundred calls, Scheyer tweeted his fans to stop texting and calling his friend.

In 2010, a rumor spread via Twitter that teen celebrity Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber
Justin Drew Bieber is a Canadian pop/R&B singer, songwriter and actor. Bieber was discovered in 2008 by Scooter Braun, who came across Bieber's videos on YouTube and later became his manager...

 had died. Hashtag "#JustinBieber" remained a Trending Topic for many months until Twitter changed their formula to show newer topics more prominently; however this resulted in fans creating new hashtags to get around the solution.

Oldest user

At the age of 104, Ivy Bean
Ivy Bean
Ivy Bean was a British internet personality, known for being the oldest person in the world on both Facebook and Twitter.-Early life:...

 of Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 was the oldest user of the website. She quickly became more widely known, and several fan pages were made in her honour. She visited Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...

and his wife Sarah in Downing Street early in 2010. At the time of her death, she had 4,962 friends on Facebook and more than 56,000 followers on Twitter. Her death was widely reported in the media and she received tributes from several notable media personalities.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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