Twitter is all the rage these days with movie stars to anyone on the street having an account. Barack Obama single-handedly did more marketing of Twitter than anything Twitter could have done by itself. It is spreading faster than free email spread when it was first introduced (Remember initial Hotmail days).
People have found interesting ways of using it from marketing to other promotion broadcasts. Since Tech/Marketing guys are smarter than me to leverage Twitter, I thought I would just look at alternative areas where public stands to benefit the best.
- Schools have always had this need to inform parents in times of emergencies. Today in majority of the schools it is done through some clerk calling up parents sequentially or in some advanced schools they might use some software to send mass voice messages to parents. I think no matter how small the school is twitter is affordable for any school and would be a wise decision to have a Twitter account. I am sure the Twitter folks would not mind setting up a regulated feed for schools to protect their privacy.
- Police Advisories (Think Amber Alert in California): The police force always have the need to broadcast information to people in the county or state about a emergency or a ongoing incident. Twitter would be a fantastic outlet to broadcast such information.
- Weather Advisories: Weather bureau or USGS advisories on extreme weather or earthquake advisories would be a great. Flash floods, hurricanes, thunderstorms are events that could happen anywhere. Any advance notice to these events could give people that much more time to get prepared.
- FDA Recall Alerts: FDA release recalls all the time. Given the there are people shopping all the time, a timely alert to stop people from buying what would be a dangerous food item, before the retail machinery can get the items off the shelf would be of great utility.
