Ed Note: This is a guest post is authored by Mahafreed Irani. Mahafreed is a journalist with the Times of India in Mumbai. She blogs here and tweets here. /Ed Note.
While thousands of Mumbaikars spent their weekend lighting crackers on Marine Drive, Twitter members like Anaggh Desai decided to use the power of Web 2.0 to raise money for charity. On Saturday morning, the 46-year-old Mumbai-based entrepreneur asked people to send him a Deepwish (Diwali greeting on Twitter), “For every wish received, I will contribute 0.25p to NGO Goonj’’. Excited by the idea, 41 other tweeple (members of the social networking site) decided to donate amounts ranging from 50p to Rs 5 for every greeting tweeted at them. By the end of two days, an amount of Rs 55,000 was collected from tweeple all over India and even the US and Saudi Arabia towards `educating the girl child’.
On his blog, Desai, who otherwise regularly tweets one-liners, wrote, “I am putting my money where my mouth is and will donate Rs 100 for every Diwali gift received, Rs 5 for every comment on my blog, 50p for every SMS greeting and 25p for every wish on Facebook, Twitter or via email’’.
Excited by the idea, popular tweeple like @b50 mobilized people and posted updates like “476 tweets x Rs 63.75 = 30,345. Those were the effort of 42 people on per tweet basis,’’ from time to time, to thank “ Twitteristan’’ and get more contributors.
While some deepwishes were as brief as, “Play it safe’’ the idea was to get creative and tweet “some genuine, original heartfelt stuff’’. So timelines were clogged with wishful updates asking for, `friendly Indo-Pak ties, non-polluting crackers and no water scarcity’. Actress Gul Panag tweeted, “I wish I could be 4 again, and 12 and 16 and 18. Meanwhile wish to donate to charity.’’
This is not the first time members of the networking site have come together to raise money for charity. Indian tweeple have earlier participated in twestivals, multi-charity fundraising campaigns organised on Twitter.
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