11 Proofs of Twitter’s Amazing Power

Twitter is celebrating its 5th birthday today. What better time than that to take a look at its amazing power.

Is there anything Twitter can’t do? Well, it can do a lot. Check out these stories.

1.) NYC homeless man finds daughter through Twitter
The New York Daily News says on Wednesday he posted his cell phone number, her name and a photo of her at age 16. She called him the next day.

2.) Resolve credit card problems through Twitter
Why wait on endless hold to dispute a credit card fee over the phone when can post your complaint on Twitter and often resolve the problem more quickly and with fewer hassles? Most major banks in the U.S., including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citi, have launched customer support accounts on Twitter — the popular website where people communicate in messages of 140 characters or fewer.

3.) Seattle Police use power of Twitter to get stolen cars back
Social networking for crime-fighting? Seattle Police said they believe Twitter can be effective for solving certain crimes. Starting Wednesday, 911 dispatchers will use the Twitter handle @GetYourCarBack to post bulletins on stolen vehicles.

4.) Mayor Booker Uses Twitter to Aid New Jersey Blizzard Cleanup
After a blizzard started blanketing the Northeast on Dec. 26, an event that earned the Twitter hashtag #snowpocalypse, Booker turned the microblogging site into a public-service tool. Residents of the city, which has a population of around 280,000, swarmed Booker’s account (@CoryBooker) with requests for help, and the mayor responded. He and his staff have bounced around Newark shoveling streets and sending plows to areas where residents said they were still snowed in.

5.) Indonesians beat slow disaster relief by tweeting
Tech-savvy Indonesians are using social network Twitter to beat a slow government in delivering relief to disaster victims, after a tsunami and volcanic eruptions stretched official aid capacity in the sprawling archipelago.

6.) Twitter Can Improve Students’ Grades
Researchers measured student engagement at the end of the semester, and found that the Twitter group had a significantly greater increase not only in their engagement with the course material, but in the grade point average as well compared to the control group.

7.) UK detectives to nab criminals using Twitter
Detectives in UK will now be trained to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to catch killers and other criminals. Student investigators will be shown how they could trace wanted people on Facebook and Twitter, where they might leave posts revealing valuable clues.

8.) Twitter Could Act as Early Warning System for Epidemics
The microblogging site Twitter could act as an early warning system for epidemics, a team of experts at London’s City University found in a new study published on Tuesday.

9.) Twitter to the rescue for some stranded travelers
Some travelers stranded by the great snowstorm of 2010 discovered a new lifeline for help. When all else fails, Twitter might be the best way to book a seat home. While the airlines’ reservation lines required hours of waiting — if people could get through at all — savvy wired travelers were able to book new reservations, get flight information and track lost luggage. And they could complain, too.

10.) Twitter Predicts Box-Office Sales Better Than a Prediction Market
Two researchers at HP Labs, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman, have discovered that you can actually use Twitter mentions to predict how well a movie will do in it’s first couple weekends of release. What’s more, the method works even better than the most accurate method currently in use, the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX).

11.) Twitter Can Predict the Stock Market
The emotional roller coaster captured on Twitter can predict the ups and downs of the stock market, a new study finds. Measuring how calm the Twitterverse is on a given day can foretell the direction of changes to the Dow Jones Industrial Average three days later with an accuracy of 86.7 percent.

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