Twitter is hoping to make a splash in at the Cannes international advertising festival this week having had a low key appearance last year.

The feeling looks like it might well be mutual as Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder and executive chairman, is honoured as the media person of the year.

Philip Thomas, chief executive of Cannes Lions, said: “Since inventing Twitter in 2006, Jack Dorsey has, in an incredibly short space of time, brought to the world an entirely new way for people to communicate, share ideas, and learn new things. Read More »

Tony Nicklinson used to travel the world. Then, on a business trip in 2005 he suffered a devastating stroke that stopped any movement in his body, but left his perfectly mind in tact.

This condition is called locked in syndrome – a patient is locked into their body.

Tony’s story will be broadcast on Channel 4 Dispatches tonight. The TV report comes the day before he goes to the High Court to allow someone to end his life.

At 6.31 last Wednesday morning, Tony became the first ever sufferer of Locked in Syndrome to send a Tweet and he has since sent a number of tweet, but this is his first:

Hello world. I am tony nicklinson, I have locked-in syndrome and this is my first ever tweet. #tony

— TonyNicklinson (@TonyNicklinson) June 13, 2012

Tony is now confined to a single room in his family home and requires round the clock care. He has described his house as a ‘prison’. He is only able to communicate via a computer, and it was that Twitter allowed him for the first time to communicate to the outside world since his stroke.

The moving story has prompted quite a response online. Tony quickly picked up 1,500 Twitter followers with hundreds of people leaving him positive comments and retweets.  After Conservative MP Louise Mensch rightly highlighted the issue of trolling recently, it is nice to see examples of online kindness, and support being given the social space.

Tony now has over 7,300 followers and  plans to tweet daily, including tweeting live during the broadcast of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme tonight.  This is all done by using a computer that follows his eye movements, and software converts his eye movement into the letters of the alphabet and in turn into words and speech.

Ultimately Tony wants to raise a legal issue though. He wishes to be able to die, without any member of his loved words being convicted of murder for facilitating this. His legal team they are not trying to bring in a euthanasia law, but fundamentally challenge the law of murder, as they believe they can prove that helping Tony to die is a necessity (one of two exceptions to murder.) As well as being an extraordinary breakthrough in medical technology, using social media means that this controversial and highly emotive issue will be brought to a lot more people, and debated in a very public forum.

You can watch Tony tweeting in this video: