Once again, folks. The power of social media.
In order to raise money for aHomeInHaiti.org, an organisation attempting to rebuild The Miriam Center in Haiti, celebrities from all areas of entertainment held a very special celebrity auction on Twitter called TwitChange. The auction, which was the first of its kind, allowed people to bid on some very unique Twitter prizes from their favourite celebrities. Each celebrity had four separate auctions with the highest bidders winning these prizes:
- Your celebrity following you on Twitter
- Your celebrity mentioning you on Twitter
- Your celebrity retweeting you Twitter
- A megapack of all three prizes.
The Miriam Center in Haiti houses and cares for children in Haiti with special needs, and was destroyed in the recent Haitian earthquake. All proceeds are going towards helping to rebuild this center and help the lives of many Haitian children with special needs.
This idea is as innovative as it is disturbing. We live in a culture both addicted to social networking and obsessed with celebrity personalities. This auction takes both of those slightly worrying traits and combined them to raise money. And guess what? It’s worked. Within hours of the auction going live 5 celebrities had already received bids breaking the $2,000 barrier, and by the time bidding closed the top ten celebrities had raised over $65,000 (£42,000) for charity.
Because a few clicks and a message or two on Twitter is so easy to do, celebrities have been incredibly willing to take part. The list of celebrities who took part is huge, from sportsmen (e.g. Shaquille O’Neil) to actors and actresses (e.g. Eva Longoria), musicians (e.g. Justin Beiber), journalists (e.g. Stephen Fry), the auction boasted a roster as far reaching as it was deep. I don’t know the exact number, but if you have a favourite celebrity on Twitter, don’t be surprised to find out they took part.
But the response from the celebs has been better than that. Many of them have been offering extra prizes for their winner to try and raise more money. Shaq gave away Celtics home opener tickets and free jerseys. George Lopez gave away VIP tickets and a chance to meet him backstage. And some celebrities such as Simon Pegg even offered to give the winner a personal phone call or skype session.
And for those of you that find this whole thing hilariously absurd, there’s that ever elusive small print that informs us that the celebrities are only obliged to follow the winner for 90 days. Can you imagine paying $3,000 to have someone famous follow you on Twitter only for them to ditch you 3 months later? That’s gotta burn.
[Source: Zero's Requiem]
Related Articles
- Celebrity Twitter Auction: Get Celebrities to Follow, Retweet (quickonlinetips.com)
- Auctioning off Twitter Followers – The TwitChange Auction Uses Sells off Celebrity Followers (GALLERY) (trendhunter.com)
- Charity auction lets you buy celeb Twitter friends (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
