Tweeting for Good

A Touching Twitter Story: OK, so this is one of those rare instances when I don’t hate Twitter. Alice Pyne is a 15-year old who has been fighting an aggressive form of cancer for four years. Recently, her diagnosis worsened and so Alice decided to start a blog to put up her bucket list of the things she wants to do before her time comes. It didn’t take long for her list to go viral; #AlicesBucketList became a trending topic on Twitter and people were soon tweeting and retweeting and visiting her blog with offers to help her cross off some of the items on her list. Alice has also used her blog to raise money for cancer research. Alice says her number-one goal for her bucket list is to encourage everyone inspired by her story to become a bone marrow donor. Alice’s story and her courage are undoubtedly inspirational, and what is also inspiring is that people can be good; and what’s more is that social media was involved. All too often social media does the opposite of good. There are too many awful stories involving Facebook; we are used to daily Twitter scandals; we have become accustomed to self-absorbed oversharing and self-editing. It’s really refreshing to see people use Twitter for something other than self-promotion, to connect and tweet for a truly good cause. Thank you Alice for inspiring generosity and kindness. WNEM

Words of Wisdom from the Zuck: Mark Zuckerberg, an advocate of young people and education, gave a speech at an 8th grade graduation in Menlo Park. Zuckerberg discussed how to overcome “I can’t” and offered thoughtful, positive advice to these soon-to-be high schoolers.  He forgot to remind them to be careful about what they do on Facebook. SF Chronicle