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Photos by Jessica DiNapoli
One micro-blog was re-blogged by thousands of people, snowballed into a movement over a popular social networking site and, over the course of last weekend, netted 155 pounds of food that was donated to Island Harvest, a hunger relief organization in Mineola.
That’s the magic of one of the newest and most popular social networking sites, Twitter.com, explained Steve Haweeli of East Hampton, who helped organize one of the Tweetups, at the Panera Bread Company in Hampton Bays on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The Tweetup, the term for a meeting of Twitter users, was attended by about a dozen Twitter users.
“It’s very much about sharing information. Then, sometimes somebody may reply to you about the information you write,” explained Mr. Haweeli, who owns WordHampton Public Relations in East Hampton and uses Twitter.com for business networking and keeping in touch with friends. “Then you can strike up a conversation because someone might have similar information.
“A relationship may be born between two Tweeters, they can meet in person,” he added.
Mr. Haweeli, whose Twitter name is SteveHaweeli, said that he’s met up with fellow Tweeters in the past—including at a dinner at Blue Sky in Sag Harbor over the summer—but Saturday’s Tweetup was the first one that he has attended for charity.
According to LITweetup.com, last weekend’s meetings—the one in Hampton Bays plus one in Rockville Centre and another in Hauppauge—generated 155 pounds of food donations and a total of $117 in cash donations to Island Harvest.
“It was a little bit more than we expected,” Mr. Haweeli said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon, explaining that some people who came to the Hampton Bays Tweetup heard about it over another social networking site, Facebook.
Mr. Haweeli said that Jeff Namnum of South Hempstead had the idea to do a Tweetup for a charity less than one month ago. Mr. Haweeli, Mr. Namnum and Becky Kopprasch, another avid Tweeter from Smithtown whose name is MissBeckala, organized the event.
He said that the group choose Panera Bread Company stores to have the event because they offer free wireless internet to their customers.
In fact, at Saturday’s event, Mr. Haweeli sent out a picture attached to a Tweet to the nearly 2,000 people who follow his Twitter updates using yfrog.com. The text with his picture listed the Twitter names of others at the event in Hampton Bays, and urged his followers to attend the Tweetup in Hauppauge on Sunday. If he was lucky, he explained, others would re-Tweet his Tweet and get more people to attend Sunday’s event.
According to the rules of Twitter, each Tweet, or post, can have a total of only 140 characters.
Mitch Hagler of Riverhead, who owns Richard York Shoes on Main Street in Southampton, said that he has been using Twitter for his business for the past eight months. His Twitter name is TheShoeDawg.
“It’s for brand name and store awareness,” Mr. Hagler said. “I pick up on different news stories and ideas for business.”
He explained that he follows different restaurants and media outlets on Twitter, and also follows different transportation companies such as the Hampton Jitney, whose Twitter name is HamptonJitney. The Jitney’s most recent Tweet is about the company’s Black Friday service to Tanger Outlets in Riverhead.
Mr. Hagler’s son, Aaron, a student in the Riverhead School District, said that he mainly uses Twitter to keep in touch with friends. He said that he has friends from outside of his district that he communicates with through the social networking site.
Chris Pisacano, whose Twitter name is ChrisPisacano and who works at WordHampton, uses Twitter for business and personal reasons. He explains that he follows entertainers, such as the Dave Matthews Band, on the networking site as well as picks up world news on the New York Times’ and National Public Radio’s Twitter updates.
Mr. Haweeli, who admitted that he did not understand Twitter for the first six months he used it, is now a devotee of the site, and spends about 20 minutes per day on it.
“It’s a phenomenon,” he said.
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