{"id":51,"date":"2009-12-01T22:43:35","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T05:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/?p=51"},"modified":"2009-12-01T22:47:53","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T05:47:53","slug":"retweeting-for-aids-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/01\/retweeting-for-aids-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Retweeting for AIDS research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, yet again my mixed feelings about Twitter get tweaked. An old friend of mine from Microsoft has hit the <a href=http:\/\/www.techflash.com\/seattle\/2009\/12\/retweet_this_message_and_donate_to_aids_research.html>headlines in Seattle&#8217;s TechFlash<\/a>, and raised over $7,500 for AIDS research merely by sending out one tweet. It said &#8220;For each re-tweet, I&#8217;ll donate $5 to fight AIDS.&#8221; It started as just a twexperiment (Twitter-speak for &#8220;Twitter experiment&#8221;). The tweet went viral, and within a few hours Mike had to adjust his original budget of $500 and cap the offer at $10,000.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/assets.bizjournals.com\/cms_media\/seattle\/2009\/12\/mikekoss.jpg?site=techflash.com\"><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m wondering, though: did Twitter actually accomplish anything towards raising funds for AIDS research? Couldn&#8217;t Mike have simply donated $10,000 without involving 2000 people retweeting his tweet? Isn&#8217;t he just encouraging people to think they can accomplish good for the world by sitting there twittering? Is rewarding this kind of &#8220;armchair activism&#8221; good for the world in the long run? Well, maybe the fact that his twexperiment became newsworthy is the answer. It bumped up people&#8217;s awareness of World AIDS Day, and perhaps for that reason we should thank Twitter. (Still, does <b>your<\/b> awareness that today is World AIDS Day make you do anything about it? It didn&#8217;t make me do anything about it other than &#8220;retweeting&#8221; this story about Mike&#8217;s twexperiment. Do you really believe that if we all chatter more about AIDS it will make it go away?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, yet again my mixed feelings about Twitter get tweaked. An old friend of mine from Microsoft has hit the headlines in Seattle&#8217;s TechFlash, and raised over $7,500 for AIDS research merely by sending out one tweet. It said &#8220;For each re-tweet, I&#8217;ll donate $5 to fight AIDS.&#8221; It started as just a twexperiment (Twitter-speak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/faithandtechnology.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}