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A blog with delusions of grandeur

It’s hard to get people to do stuff on the internet

On this year's World AIDS Day, several celebrities "died" or gave up Twitter in an effort to raise $1 million dollars (at which point they could begin Tweeting again) as The Daily What points out, they didn't do so hot raising only $104K (up to $184K now).
The most notable thing to emerge from this experiment is how, in the span of 24 hours, with millions upon millions of followers among them, these celebs were only able to collect about as much money as one of them makes in a minute.

Hey famous people, here’s an idea: Instead of using your limelight to shuck cash off common Internet folk, maybe you pull out your gilded checkbooks and donate the million dollars out of those fortunes happenstance so graciously awarded you.


This is a good example of what Anil Dash wrote about in January, the number of Twitter followers doesn't really matter if they're not engaged. It's incredibly difficult to get people to do things on the internet, and it's not surprising Kim Kardashian's 5.4 million followers didn't bring her Twitter account back to life. Elijah Wood gets a pass because he only has 8K followers.

Posted by: aaron cohen

Category: Blog

Tagged: , ,

One Response

  1. dorf says:

    malcolm gladwell’s recent new yorker article about the actual use of twitter and facebook in social activism touches on these same ideas.

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

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