Grown Up Thinking

In the wake of Haiti’s massive and devastating earthquake, we’re now bearing witness to the largest text-based fundraising campaign for disaster relief to date.

Countless compassionate individuals combined with the girth of our social media world have led to an outpouring of financial and emotional support for the people of Haiti. As of Thursday morning, the American Red Cross had collected nearly $3 million in donations through text messages.

Both the American Red Cross and the Yéle Haiti Foundation have set up “text to donate” services and have asked Twitter users to text a number to make a donation, which is then added to your cell phone bill. #Text, #Help Haiti and #Yele are currently among today’s top 10 trending topics on Twitter.

Text-based donations get aid swiftly to those in need- Yéle Haiti’s technology partners Mobile Giving and Give on the Go have even waived the typical two-week waiting period to deposit the donations. As a result, Yéle Haiti says they’ll have nutrition bars, candles, blankets and flashlights on the ground in Haiti this Friday. Many text-based donation services even let you sign up for tweets to see how their donations are being spent.

These past few days have truly been a testament to the power that technology and social media hold- and as a wise man once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

To donate $10 to the American Red Cross’s earthquake relief efforts, text “Haiti” to 90099.

To donate $5 to Yéle Haiti, text “YELE” to 501501.

Monday, the New York Times launched TimesPeople—a social networking add-on to its website the publication hopes will evolve the media giant into a more robust community of readers in a web-obsessed world.  Obviously a response to the increasing takeover of micromedia channels and alternative media sources, TimesPeople is NYT’s declaration that they’ve joined the party.  But having seen the new feature set in action—perched pleasantly atop nytimes.com—I have to ask: is this just 2.0 lipstick on a 1.0 pig?

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