Tuesday, December 22, 2009

How Can Twitter Find Cure For Cancer?

Why this site? I, like most, have been amazed by the number of people in my work, school, neighborhood, and family that have had a battle with cancer. Some minor clashes, others major and unfortunately, some life-threatening. While I often give to a charitable organization to assist in the battle to end cancer, I never really feel as if I do enough to try and stop this deadly disease that’s so prominent in today’s world.

Secondly, I’m very interested in technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and the idea of bringing people together to solve problems. (crowdsourcing) As any entrepreneur knows, the greater the problem, the greater the opportunity.

We know that there are thousands of people and organizations working hard to find a cure for cancer or find ways to prevent cancer from ever occurring. Hats off to all those enlisted in the fight and the progress that has been made in this battle. BUT….what’s the “little guy” to do other than donate towards such a cause?

Well, enter another interest of mine, social networking. While I once thought Twitter was a wasteful app, I now have embraced it for what it is, a global networking tool that connects, informs, creates and maybe, just maybe can bring people together to do great things.

So I set up a twitter account, which costs nothing, called @abolishcancer. The goal was to get the Power of the People to make a difference and contribute towards cancer research. Then I came up with the idea that if I could get new “daily” sponsors to donate for every new follower of @abolishcancer to the American Cancer Society, we could get people connected for a common cause. A benefit to the sponsor, which is just for one calendar day, would be for me to tweet and retweet throughout the day about the sponsor and give them some press about their willingness to help. Lastly, the more followers we received at @abolishcancer, the greater the word would spread for the sponsor and for the site.

So far we have had 5 sponsors in the month or so in existence and close to 500 followers. What’s the goal you may ask? Well, what if we received 1 million followers and hence, 1 million towards cancer research? If Shaq or Ashton Kutcher could do it, why not us?

Please help us get daily sponsors so more money can be raised in the fight to abolishcancer. Email me at bonham.darah@gmail.com to become a sponsor or if you have other ideas to help this grow.

Help us use Twitter to find a cure for cancer.

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