Earlier this month

Earlier this month, Twitter launched @Twitterstories, a series of stories that capture the power of the tweet.
I love that Twitter has developed a place for these stories to be shared. They are great reminders that technology, at its best, is a direct extension of the helping human hand. The best tweets in turn have a special way of anchoring to the human heart.

“Each story reminds us of the humanity behind Tweets that make the world smaller,” Twitter posted on its blog.

These stories come from people around the world, and new ones surface each day. Twitter encourages users to submit their stories to be spotlighted.

One Oregon man describes how a single tweet saved his mother’s small independent bookstore. He used the last $1,000 on his credit card to promise a burrito to anyone who came into the store.

Roger Ebert, the famous film critic who lost his voice after a series of cancer surgeries, writes about how Twitter has helped him find a new voice: “There’s something seductive about it: the stream, the flow, the chatter, the sudden bursts of news, the snark, the gossip, time itself tweet-tweet-tweeting away.”

When Chris Strouth from Minnesota needed a kidney, he put it in a tweet. He got 19 offers within days. He found a compatible donor and now has a new kidney.

The world of social media can be overwhelming, and if we’re not careful, all-consuming. There have been times when we’ve all reconsidered how and why we participate in social networks, but these stories inspire us to keep tweeting.