Everyone's A-Twitter

posted on 11/19/08 by Meghan Wilker

After my first Twitter post, I got a follow-up email from our geeky reader, Maile. (By the way, emails are nice, but blog comments feel like a warm hug on a cold day). Anyway, in her email Maile mentioned that she follows the LA Fire Department and several police departments on Twitter.

Wha?! I had no idea that fire or police departments even used Twitter!

I did a little research and it seems that the Scottsdale, AZ police were the first ones to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. The LA Fire Department has been using it as well; they used it to communicate updates during the October 2007 wildfires.

So there you go. You learn something new every day.

Unfortunately, Twitter doesn't have a great user search utility so you'll probably have to check your local police or fire department web site to see if they're tweeting.

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Comments:
(1) On November 21, 2008, Author Editor Rett says:
That is something I didn't know :)

Similarly, I found it interesting that Comcast (http://twitter.com/comcastcares) and Dell (http://twitter.com/richardatdell) both use Twitter, mainly to deal with customer complaints. This was discussed by Valeria Maltoni in her Corporate Blogger session at this year's MIMA summit.
(2) On November 21, 2008, Author Editor Julie says:
That's a pretty cool usage of Twitter.

In addition to Comcast and Dell, here are some other places to find deals on Twitter.

Shopping: http://twitter.com/shopping
My Coupons: http://twitter.com/mycoupons
Gorilla Shopper: http://twitter.com/gorillashopper
Amazon Deals: http://twitter.com/amazondeals
Deal Twit:http://twitter.com/DealTwit
Black Friday: http://twitter.com/blackfriday
Deals: http://twitter.com/deals
Woot: http://twitter.com/woot

Happy shopping!
(3) On December 2, 2008, Author Editor jeremy says:
I've used the Comcast twitter presence and gotten a problem resolved in very short order. Like you said, nice to have a human touch.