In Vancouver, the city offers a service where residents can receive Twitter updates reminding them about when their next trash collection is due.
At the 2012 London Olympics, the police put together a special task force dedicated to weeding out potential troublemakers through social media. This is probably due to the large part that Twitter and Facebook played in the spreading of the London Riots the previous year.
Because Twitter messages about earthquakes can actually travel faster than the shockwaves themselves, the US government is funding a project that monitors "tweets about seismic activity" to predict oncoming earthquakes.
