Suicidal Woman Uses Twitter for Help

Proving that dispatchers must be informed about all methods of communications, San Jose (Calif.) police say they received “numerous” calls from around the world warning them of a woman in that city who was using Twitter to make suicide threats. Police said they located the woman unharmed, and took her to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. The threats came to light as the woman was following the “tweets” of actress Demi Moore. You may know that Twitter allows members to send/post messages (140 characters or less!) to the Twitter computers. Twitter members can also subscribe to other members’ accounts, creating a vast, complex and sometimes crazy network of posters and followers. In this case, the San Jose woman was following Demi Moore’s tweets, and then posting her own messages, which were then visible to others who were also following Moore’s messages. Beyond personal communications, Twitter is now being used by companies, associations and other groups to quickly communicate with their members (CNN, Martha Stewart, Ustream TV, John Mayer, NBA…and the list goes on). Read more about the suicide incident here.