- Honey, I'm your mishpocha, that's all I can say.
All right, go with God.
Today's show is all about social media
and the powerful impact it can have.
Mark Horvath is a perfect example of that.
He documents the lives of the homeless
and posts their videos on YouTube.
Here's a clip of Mark in action
from the documentary At Home.
- Hi, YouTube.
My name is Mark.
I started something called invisiblepeople.tv
where I empower homeless people to tell their own stories.
I started using social media,
not because I wanted to be a social media guru,
but because it's free.
- I miss being domestic, you know.
I'm kinda losing that feeling.
- [Mark] You're homeless with your two daughters,
who are over playing, tell me about it.
- I've been on the street for almost five years, bro.
- We had a house at one point, we had vehicles,
we had everything and it kinda just, it fell apart.
At one point, when this is all happening,
you feel like a failure.
You think, "You know what,
there are still people worse off than you.
There are people who are living under bridges."
- Please welcome Mark Horvath to the show.
(audience applauding)
Mark, it's a pleasure to have you here.
Thank you for my lovely gift.
That book is absolutely beautiful
and it will be on my desk all the time.
So thank you.
- That's kind of how it all started.
- Tell everybody.
You gave me this book, it was portraits of the homeless.
You were once homeless yourself.
- Yeah, my last boss had it in his office
and then he laid me off
and I said, "Gosh, I could do that with video."
But my story, back many years ago, I had a great job
in television and syndication
and I ended up homeless on Hollywood Boulevard.
And I rebuilt my life back to a three bedroom house
and, you know, new car, new garage,
and working in nonprofit marketing.
- [Ricki] And you also got sober.
- Yeah, I have 17 years sober this last August.
(audience clapping)
- Fantastic.
So tell everybody because your story is so inspiring.
What made you wanna use social media
to show a clearer picture
of what it's like for the homeless?
- Well, I had rebuilt my life and the economy tanked.
So I lost everything again.
And this time, sober, I couldn't find a job.
I looked.
McDonald's wouldn't hire me, marketing was being cut.
It was a very scary time.
- And that's the story for so many people right now
in this country.
- I'm not the only one,
but the magic is get out of yourself and go help somebody.
And your problems don't go away,
but it gets a perspective.
So I just went out, and I grabbed the camera,
and I started interviewing homeless people
because I've always felt homeless people's story
was never told right.
And I started using Twitter and YouTube and Facebook,
not because I wanted to be a social media guru,
but they're free, it's all I had.
- And it's powerful.
It reaches the masses.
I want just everyone to know,
tell us about the farm that was donated to you.
- Well, I was speaking in Arkansas
and it was a amphitheater outside,
very similar to this studio,
and several homeless people were in the audience
and they started heckling.
And I could've, I kind of had a choice.
I could've either called security or embraced it.
So I invited them down, and I interviewed them
just like I do on Invisible People.
And the mayor was in the audience,
and a housing program was started.
And a farmer donated 40 acres of land to the community
that is currently feeding 150 people a week,
and that's just amazing.
- It gives you chills,
the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
It is absolutely amazing.
And I wanna just say, one of your biggest fans is here
in our audience today.
She is the head of social innovation at Twitter
and the author of Twitter for Good, Claire Diaz-Ortiz.
It is so nice to see you here.
Couldn't look cuter.
So, I mean, it's amazing.
I write on twitter what I'm having for breakfast
and the idea of what people like Mark
are doing with Twitter.
So, you know, what can you say?
I mean, this power of social media,
it's even bigger than we think.
- No, it's unbelievable.
And what you have to remember is that Twitter
is a really simple tool,
but when you get these life-changing experiences out of it
that's because people are using it
in really innovative, amazing ways.
And Mark is a perfect example of that.
- [Ricki] And you featured him in your book.
- Yeah, so when I was doing research for a book called
Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet at a Time
Mark was basically front and center
simply because what he does that's so interesting
is, you know, there are many nonprofits
and charities on Twitter,
but what Mark does is he's able to put social media
in the hands of those being helped,
which is really a big difference if you think about it.
It's one thing to be tweeting about your great work
at a homeless shelter maybe,
but it's different to put social media
in the hands of homeless populations.
- It's absolutely amazing and I wanna say
we wanted to help you and so our friends at Hanes
are donating 5,000 pairs of socks
for you to hand out to the homeless.
(audience applauding)
And Henry Schein Cares is also donating 5,000 toothbrushes
and 10,000 travel-size containers of toothpaste.
- Wow.
- I'm just thrilled to help
in your journey of helping everybody.
Thank you so much.
Coming up next, you know what Claire?
Here, you read that, coming up next.
- Coming up next, some say if he only knew how to Tweet
he might have won Dancing With The Stars.
- Fan-favorite and my friend Tristan MacManus
is gonna get a Twittervention you won't wanna miss.
We'll be right back.
(audience applauding)