Hourly, millions of Twitter and Facebook updates describe daily mundane tasks or occurrences. But, these communications can also contain valuable information for marketing – and potentially for scientific research. Marketers and analysts harvest users' information and sentiments to help direct marketing campaigns and product launches. The geolocation of these snippets of information aids in creating a more customized response for the user. The same analytical techniques can be applied to verifying severe weather phenomenon, aiding in disaster response, improving forecasting techniques, as well as engaging the public who provides information to those who use the data. This paper will focus on several examples of how publicly available data is harvested by NGOs and science organizations to help direct research efforts. It will also describe some of the best practices for discovering data and creating usable maps.