Giving Homeless People a Voice Online

People who use technology like Mark Horvath inspire and amaze me. So many people come up with technological or Internet-based ideas in the hopes of making money — and in this economy, who can blame them? But then there are people like Horvath who use technology simply in the hopes of making a difference.

According to this CNN story, Horvath was once known as the "Lizard Man of Hollywood Boulevard." He had a pet iguana and would let people take a picture of it for a dollar. Oh, and he was homeless, a victim of drug and alcohol addiction. Just last year, after being laid off multiple times, he was nearly homeless again when he started InvisiblePeople.tv. It's a Web site where he posts video interviews with homeless people, to give them a chance to talk about their situation.

Because of that Web site, and the myriad of other social media he uses, he came back to Hollywood Boulevard, as one of the featured speakers at the 140 Characters Conference. It's a Twitter-inspired conference (140 characters being the maximum characters for a tweet) where, according to the Web site, those attending "explore the effects of real-time Internet on Business."

Horvath also has two Twitter streams, @hardlynormal and @invisiblepeople, where he has more than 11,000 total followers. It was his raw, honest tweets about his experience with homeless people that brought him to the attention of Whrrl, a company in Seattle. Employees there followed his tweets and wanted to meet him, so they put together a "tweetup" (a meeting for those on Twitter) for him. Word about him spread and, with support from Whrrl and other donors and sponsors, Horvath started to travel the country, to more than 20 cities, videotaping homeless people, writing about them and posting the videos.

And because of his notoriety, according to CNN, "[I]n more than a few instances, Horvath's visits resulted in immediate help, from new housing and feeding programs in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to new shoes for 50 children in Baton Rouge, Louisiana."

Amazingly, Horvath continues to barely make ends meet himself. He's in debt, has no health insurance and makes rent by working as a temp at a homeless shelter, along with help he gets from churches and friends. And yet his work to let people know about the homeless will continue.

Here's a video from the CNN article about Horvath and some of the homeless people he's profiled:

Photo courtesy of prettydaisies, via Flickr