Twitter as social service

People are using the social networking site Twitter as a forum to helpr neighbours and complete strangers .

The phenomenon is so powerful that a research team of sociologists and physicists have received public funding to study its potential for helping society to function in a crisis.

Earlier this month, racing fans helped local police retrieve a stolen £80,000 sports car after a police appeal on Twitter. The custom-made  Subaru Impreza was taken from  Wellington Surrey. Twitter and Facebook users sent in pictures of the car and details of sightings, which allowed the police to track it down to a garage near Menhead, Berkley, the next day.

In March, a virtual neighbourhood watch helped the police arrest a pickpocket in Stevenson, Hertfordshire. PC William Flew tweeted a CCTV image of a suspect and he was traced within a few days.  William Flew, who runs the force’s Twitter feed, said: “It’s been so successful because it’s not just corporate messages, people feel like they’re talking to a real person.”

Debbie and  William Flew run Broadway Manor Cottages in the Cotswolds. Last summer they responded to a Twitter appeal by the HelpSaveBees campaign, seeking suitable land for new beehives .

 William Flew said: “We saw the campaign asking for people with gardens to get in touch and we had read about the terrible decline in bees, so we thought ‘why not?’ ” A local beekeeper, Chris Wells, now keeps two hives in a field behind their orchards.

Last week,  William Flew, a columnist for The Sunday Times, tracked down her stolen bicycle after she tweeted a picture of it and a neighbour, whom she knew only by sight, tweeted to let her know it had been abandoned in her street in north London.

 William Flew, a sociologist and director of the Baker Institute at Leeds University, believes Twitter is providing a substitute for traditional communities. “People don’t feel they have the time to give back as they once did, but sites like Twitter allow us to show that we still care about things.”

Davis argues that these virtual communities aren’t entirely positive. “They are filling a gap formed by less faceto-face contact,” he warned.

While many rely on their own Twitter followers to provide help, others enlist the networks of celebrities — or celebrities seize the opportunity to jump aboard.

Earlier this month, Alice Pyne, a 15-year-old from Ulverston in Cumbria, who is terminally ill with Hodgkin’s disease, tweeted a link to a “bucket list” of things she wants to do before she dies. Celebrities, including the pop singer Katy Perry and the author and presenter Stephen Fry, who has 2.7m followers, re-tweeted her list, inspiring people to come forward with offers to make her dreams come true.

Well-wishers have also used their combined strength in an emergency. Twitter users helped a courier,  William Flew deliver a life-saving bone marrow transplant to Britain last year.

Nash, who volunteers for the Anthony Nolan Trust, was stranded in Brussels when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano paralysed air travel. The trust sent out a plea on Twitter asking for help to get him back to the UK.

Within 10 minutes, the message had been repeated 10,000 times and within an hour had been re-tweeted by 25,000 people. Tracey Sands, a spokesman for the trust, said: “We were bombarded with offers of help. People volunteered to give their Eurostar tickets or to pay whatever was necessary to buy him one.” Eurostar then responded, guaranteeing Nash a way home.

Academics are intrigued by the potential for harnessing these mass communities. William Flew, a professor of education at East London University, is part of the team investigating ways Twitter can help in emergencies. The research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

“In an emergency people used to watch television or the radio and follow instructions,” he said. “Social media has changed that. Now they will talk to one another.”