Ohio teenager Joyce Grendel has much more class than Mike Stone, the Minnesota teen who invited porn stars to his high school prom. When Grendel’s prom date backed out at the last minute, she asked her Cleveland Browns hero, Joe Haden, to escort her instead — and he drove her in style in his white Lamborghini.

Haden also tweeted photos of the night to his 86,500 fans, including the one in this post. “I knew her because she tweets me a lot, and she’s been a really good Haden Nation supporter,” he said. “All my autographs, all my signings, she always shows up.”

What’s a teenager to do when he gets to an autograph event and realizes he doesn’t have the fat wallet necessary to enter? Tweet about it, of course. Chris Newton did, and New England Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes came to the rescue of Newton and his three friends (@Dylan_DiNatale, @hunt_30 and @Blackewalker11) in a green Porsche.

Spikes was at the event the four young men wanted to attend. When Newton tweeted about their dilemma by mentioning Spikes’ Twitter handle, Spikes told them to look for him in his car. He quietly gave them each $100, but the story eventually made its way to Twitter — and then the traditional press.

When Lauren Lane’s plans to wed Daniel Welch were threatened by the collapse of the British events company organizing her big day, she turned to Twitter for help: “Please RT to help our story! £4.5k stolen with 6 weeks to go - need a little help from our twitter friends.”

Lane’s online appeal worked, as even two celebrities retweeted it. Companies offered Lane and Welch free or discounted services for the wedding, which occurred Feb. 25. “”It just goes to show the power of Twitter,” Lane said. “As soon as I posted my message on the website everything just went crazy.”

The downside of her sudden Twitter fame: Media coverage that Lane felt made the couple look like moochers. “Can’t believe the story on the mail online! £10k in donations? We didn’t get any money! Will be having words in the am!”

NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski gained more than 100,000 followers in two hours while live-tweeting from his car during the Sprint Cup’s premier race, the Daytona 500. From his car, he tweeted a now-famous picture of a fire on the track while the race was delayed.

Some observers wondered whether Keselowski had violated a NASCAR rule against recording devices in cars during races. But NASCAR said he and other racers can keep cell phones in their cars and encouraged them to use social media “as long as they do so without risking their safety or that of others.”

AnnMarie Walsh found a home by tweeting about her homelessness. She also was featured in a teaser for a documentary about Twitter and traveled to Los Angeles for a speaking gig at the “140 Characters Conference” focused on Twitter.

Walsh told the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper, that she has recruited other homeless people to Twitter. “Twitter is our community. Anytime something comes up, you can tweet. There’s always somebody there.” Daniel Morales, a homeless man in New York, reunited with his daughter thanks to Twitter.

Emma Sullivan never expected to be making headlines during her senior year in high school, but she became a media sensation after a tweet that mocked Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (@govsambrownback). “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot,” she tweeted while representing her school at a Youth in Government event.

That outburst caught the attention of Brownback’s staff, and someone complained to Sullivan’s school. The school at first demanded that she write a letter of apology to Brownback but reversed that decision after the Twitter community rallied around Sullivan and mocked Brownback.

The governor ultimately apologized, and Sullivan’s following on Twitter soared from a few dozen to more than 15,000 in a few days. The down side to her sudden fame: She became a target for Twitter bullying and critical commentary.

UPDATE, Dec. 5: As more information about this Twitter controversy becomes available, Sullivan is looking like a co-candidate with Brownback for the Twitter Hall of Shame. One newspaper columnist noted that her original tweet was a lie.

Turning to Twitter is becoming second nature for people who personally feel the brunt of government crackdowns in the Middle East. Journalist Mona El Tahawy, a central information source during protests in Egypt, is the latest example.

El Tahawy tweeted that she was “Beaten arrested in interior ministry.” The next day, after a global outcry, she tweeted, “I AM FREE” and shared the details of her ordeal. She also thanked the political activist who lent her the phone she used to write the tweet that inspired the hashtag #freemona. Mathew Ingram of GigaOm credited the Twitter community with fostering her rescue.

Be bold when you tweet at celebrities. Oklahoma State University senior George Overbey was, and he got to play flag football game with a professional basketball star and scored coverage on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

Overbey found his way into the spotlight by replying to a tweet by National Basketball Association star Kevin Durant, who was seeking a football game to break the boredom of the NBA lockout. Durant stunned Overbey and the sports world when he accepted the offer. “Social media really is amazing,” Overbey tweeted the day after the game.

UPDATE, Dec. 1: The Durant tweet that led to him joining Overbey’s flag football game earned the No. 4 spot on Twitter’s list of the top 10 tweets of 2011.

For one weekend only, the real @irene became the @irene on most people’s minds — Hurricane Irene. Irene Tien, ironically a product strategist at a digital media firm, gave control of her Twitter account to her colleagues so they could assume the identity of the storm to share warnings and laughs.

Ross Morrison (@Inconsolable) and Bjorn Larsen (@bjorn) were the creative minds behind the tweets. Their work attracted enough attention that the Federal Emergency Management Agency reached out to them to share safety information about weathering the storm.

(Hat tip to Carl Lavin)

Stefanie Gordon was in the right airspace at the right time on a clear Monday morning earlier this month. The unemployed event planner snapped and tweeted a photo of the space shuttle Endeavor soon after it broke through the white clouds on its journey into space.

The next thing she knew, she was “an instant ‘15-minute celebrity’ for a few pictures I took with my phone.” She had so many media interview that she didn’t even find time to write her version of the story until a few days later, and the viral spread of her photos across the Internet raised questions about intellectual property theft.

UPDATE, Dec. 1: Gordon’s tweeted photo earned the No. 6 spot on Twitter’s list of the top 10 tweets of 2011.