You may have heard one too many stories about Twitter and how it’s changing the world.

This is another and it’s about how Virgin America Airlines reacted to a mom anxious about her young traveling kids waiting on the tarmac, according to MSNBC. They were stranded for a lengthy period of time with no takeoff in sight. She was concerned.

So what does she do? She Twitters her concern to her Twitter group and asking them to resend or retweet her message. Within minutes, the airlines called her and reassured her that her kids were okay.

What’s the take-away for you?

Think about it. Maybe you’re a neighborhood leader and you need to get the local police department’s attention. What if you had your Twitter group make calls asking for action? You can do this real time, while the situation is front and center.

For politicians, the uses are endless. Think about it. Perhaps, you’re a state legislative candidate and you need your supporters to show up at a sudden event with your t-shirts on.

Within a a couple of minutes you can pass the word effectively.

Who else can use this? Pastors. Real estate agents. Wine shops. City council members. State legislators. The list is endless.

Just got word via Twitter from Lansing (MI) Mayor Virg Bernero that our City Council voted down a controversial proposal to sell a city parking ramp.

This is Mayor Virg Bernero's Twitter about the parking garage vote.

What’s neat is that Bernero used micro-blogging to get the word out before the 11 p.m. news and before any bulletin from the Lansing State Journal.  Of course, there’s minimum detail, but  citizens following the mayor on Twitter know the outcome.

Now, it would be nice if the mayor and city council members had blogs so residents would get more details and points of view on a very divisive issue.

Our local paper gives minimum coverage to city hall activities.  It’s time for a new paradigm for city government coverage.

Anybody know what other cities are doing?

With the demise of most news media coverage of state legislative activity, it’s heartening to see that the Utah State Senate uses Twitter to keep followers informed about that body’s activities.

I’ve only scanned a couple handfuls of its Tweets, but the information being Twittered seems to have usefulness, including links and alerts to upcoming actions.  Kudos to Utah.

What other state legislatures use Twitter to keep voters and others informed?  I’ve not seen evidence yet of Twitter use here in the Michigan House of Representatives or Senate. 

UPDATE #1: The Michigan Senate Democrats use Twitter at http://twitter.com/MISenDems They have only 91 followers.  MSNBC recently did a story about the MI Senate Dems using Twitter and Facebook.

UPDATE #2: The Michigan House Republicans have just started using Twitter.  They can be followed at- http://twitter.com/MIHouseGOP

UPDATE #3: Michigan House Minority Leader Kevin Elsenheimer has started with Twitter at http://twitter.com/TeamKevin

Here in my part of the country most business people have barely heard of Twitter and fewer understand it.

That’s why this post from Blog of Mr. Tweet is interesting and potentially valuable for an adventuresome business owner willing to try something new.  It’s about a coffeeshop in Houston, Texas that started using Twitter to accept take-out orders and then followed up with a gathering for its Twitter followers.

This is worth reading if you’re trying to weave a group of people together with your enterprise and its mission.

I’m part of a growing Twitter group and I stumbled over the answer to sharing links with a long URL that bumped up on the 140 character limit.  When this happened, I had room for two or three short words of explanation in my tweet.

When I posted this question yesterday, I received an immediate answer.  I was pointed to the web app, www.tinyurl.com.

You insert the long URL and it immediately shortens it to a more manageable size.

Here’s an example:

The URL for my post yesterday where I posed this question looked like this– http://bloggingwithwes.com/2009/01/27/twitter-users-how-do-i-get-rid-of-my-ugly-url-for-a-tweet/

When I inserted in www.tinyurl.com, it came out looking like this- http://tinyurl.com/d9m5kv

It’s a major difference and it allows me to share my link in Twitter and to give a short explanation.

I’ve gotten a ton of helpful and interesting links from my Twitter group and I would like to return the favor, but I’ve had a challenge that I’m sure is not unique.

How do you get rid of a butt-ugly url that’s to long for Twitter and a few explaining words?An example is from the new blog by my friend Lauren Hager named Lauren Hager listens and shares. In my personal blog Daily Grit, I wrote a post about my friend’s efforts and provided some context explaining why readers might be interested visiting. This is the full url and below is how it looks:

http://westhorp.typepad.com/dailygrit/2009/01/can-lauren-hagers-blog-become-a-listening-post-for-his-part-of-michigan.html

My question:  Is there a way to shorten the url to make it shareable on Twitter so I have room enough for a few explaining words.  Even with the tinyurl, there are still too many words.

To do this am I limited to short post titles?