In the ten months that have passed since I became addicted to Twitter, I’ve seen the platform used in effective and unexpected ways. It was the first place that I heard about several news events like the bridge break down in Minneapolis and the tragic school shooting in Finland. It’s additionally been used to relay events as they are happening. David Armano (@armano) eyeballed a teen save an elderly woman from being hit by an oncoming train. Armano posted updates of the events to his Twitter account immediately after it happened, lengthy before either the Chicago Tribune or CNN posted their stories.

The most almighty thing for me continues to be the way Twitter facilitates the development of new and real friendships with public all around the world. At 140 characters per tweet, you certainly don’t develop these digital friendships overnight, but with a steady interaction by the course of weeks and months, you find yourself very much attached to these public. In many cases you interact with your digital friends more frequently than your physical friends and like your physical friends, these folks are human; each with their own set of life’s ups and downs. When a digital friend shares good news, like the birth of a child or a promotion, the community responds with congratulations. Likewise, when they share poor news, like a sick child or the death of a parent, the community rallies around them with words of support and offers to help.

I’ve experienced that support from my digital friends first hand, so I knew that when Susan Reynolds (@susanreynolds), informed her Twitter followers that the had been diagnosed with breast cancer, the community would be there to support her. True to design, Susan created a blog to document her journey. In one of her first posts, Susan described how using bags of frozen peas helped to ease the pain following her biopsy. She jokingly named the blog

“Boobs on Ice“. Shortly after, citizens started changing their Twitter avatars to “pea-vatars” and Cathleen Rittereiser (@cathleenritt) tweeted that we should all donate the cost of a package of frozen peas to a fund for cancer research. That little spark has now developed into a full-blown fund-raising campaign, named in Susan’s honor, called the Frozen Pea Fund.

The site will officially launch tomorrow (December 21, 2007), the day of Susan’s surgery. Money raised will go to Making Strides, the breast cancer campaign of the American Cancer Society.

As of that writing, at least 145 146 folks have changed their avatars to a Pea theme. Members of the community are suggesting ideas for spreading the info. CK (@ckEpiphany) suggested contacting Green Giant or BirdsEye (there’s an opportunity). Someone else suggested communicating the campaign to the head guys at Twitter. Tonight’s conversation has been nearly exclusively centered on Susan with society getting creative with their tweets, changing words so that they contain the letters “pea”. Some have gone so far as to change their Twitter name (on Frozen Pea Friday I’ll be  @DougPEAcham).

Wow, talk about the capability of community. I often get funny looks when I talk about Twitter with humans who “don’t get it”. They have a hard day understanding why anyone would “waste” date talking telling perfect strangers what they are doing. I don’t see it as wasting date. I see it as investing in real and lasting friendships. Susan is going to have a small army of digital friends to support her tomorrow and by the coming weeks as she recovers from her surgery. It’s a community brimming with compassion and I’m humbled to be a part of it. Won’t you join us?