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Business and social uses of Twitter have gotten most of the attention since the social platform hit the mainstream. But Twitter’s benefit to charities and worthwhile causes is just as obvious, and we’re now starting to see more and more uses in this sphere.
Witness the #beatcancer campaign, which made it into the Guinness World Records for tweeting its way to raise $70,000 in 24 hours for four cancer-fighting organizations.
Twitter is not alone. Facebook is proving to be a viable base of operations from which to draw attention to the world’s most pressing problems. The Causes application alone has 17.5 million monthly active users and has helped raise $4.5 million for approximately 155,000 non-profits.
LeapFish, a newly launched real-time and social search engine, is joining the movement. It has teamed up with the Make-a-Wish Foundation to empower Twitter users with the ability to grant an ill child’s dream to go to Disneyland. The Tweet-a-Cause, which hit the wires last week and runs until November 27th, is steadily climbing through the twittersphere.
This particular campaign is devoted to four-year-old Jacob, who has a rare and life-threatening disease that has affected him since birth. LeapFish is donating $0.10 per tweet to the Make-a-Wish Foundation until 100,000 tweets have been sent, raising $10,000 and granting Jacob’s wish: to take his family to Disneyland for a week.
Social media is powerful, and hopefully causes such as these are only the beginning.