You've seen them in The New York Times: 'A Life on the Streets, Captured on Twitter', it's the BBH grads project Undeheard in New York, which has furnished four homeless new yorkers with prepaid cellphones and their own twitter accounts: @jessie550 @putodanny @awitness2011 @albert814
Derrick Wiggins is @awitness2011 , an articulate man and a snappy dresser who tweets where he finds a place to sleep and updates his followers on how his job search is going. His appearance in the New York Times article was noted by Steve Smith of the NY Giants who offered to help him find a job. Danny , @putodanny , has already struck twitter gold by finding his daughter, whom he had lost contact with. He has been reunited with her and found that he's now a grandfather.
We've seen social media being facilitated to help homeless (Aluma on gowalla / with QR code signs) and drugaddicts (Monica - Ikgebruik) a lot recently, but this particular project is less about the social-media bit and more about the helping, and it is already helping the four individuals involved in it. Keep an eye on it.
Twitter is beginning to feel like reality TV 140 characters at a time.
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