Update: this campaign was not a hoax, and not a fraud as some of the commentators here insinuate. Tune in to CNN tonight at 7pm EST to see the official news report. The campaign was successful – this was the largest social mass media message distributed in a 24 hour period!
We’ve been seeing a lot of campaigns to promote breast cancer awareness this month, but here’s a fairly new one . . . #beatcancer. Today, the hashtag has hit the top trends on Twitter, with everyone tweeting about cancer, breast cancer being the obvious focal point for some.
The campaign was instigated by Beat Cancer Everywhere, a site that works to raise money for breast cancer research. They intend to set a Guiness World Record for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media within 24 hours. At the time of this writing there are still just over 12 hours left in the campaign and they have already hit 101,020 mentions.
For each mention of the hashtag, eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors will donate one cent to breast cancer research. People can tweet it, add it to their Facebook status, or blog about it . . . it all counts. And it would seem that thousands of people are more than willing to be part of this impressive, hopefully record breaking social media blast! Update 2: below the initial announcement at BlogWorld Expo 2009.
Even if you don’t actually want to participate in the tweeting, you can still donate. The Beat Cancer Everywhere website has four cancer foundations that you can donate directly to. Each one is dedicated to a specific area of cancer and allow visitors to the site to donate through Paypal. Here are the foundations listed as beneficiaries (you can see how much has been directly donated above each one on the Beat Cancer site).
Stand Up to Cancer is an organization dedicated to increasing the rapidity with which new groundbreaking treatments are tested so more people can be saved faster.
Bright Pink supports young women who are high risk for ovarian and breast cancer. They also help educate women on these diseases.
Alex’s Lemonade Stand helps promote the raising of funds for childhood cancer research and awareness. They encourage people, kids in particular, to host their own lemonade stands to raise money for the cause.
Spirit Jump offers hope and comfort to anyone battling cancer, whether man, woman or child.
Of these four organizations, Alex’s Lemonade stand seems to be a clear leader in popularity with nearly twice as much money donated than any of the other three charities.
While social media has been used extensively to promote disease awareness and encourage fundraising, this time we’re seeing it on a whole new level. It will be interesting to see just how it plays out and whether or not Beat Cancer Everywhere will actually make their world record by the deadline.
Not sure why this sparked such a controversy but I do find it all interesting. It’s part of the struggle we’re bound to witness for at least another year or so regarding the use of Twitter, how it can be beneficial rather than annoying, and how end users feel when big brands get involved. For any reason.
PersonalFitCoach.com has teamed up with Yeahtips.com to raise money for Breast Cancer Research. We are also using social networking to raise at least $100 per site. We hope this initiative spreads to other blogs as well.
You are right, Robin – and this already gave me an idea about a follow-up. The campaign was definitely poorly organized, Tamara never replied to our emails, her phone is being redirected to an answering machine, she never replied to my tweets, and so on. There are definitely many lessons to be learned from this, and I also understand the skeptics – to an extent.
Thanks for responding Mihaela. I have huge respect for Mashable (both the website and @mashable). It’s a great resource and most of the time it provides extremely reliable information. This is a rare case of it making a mistake. The problem is that @mashable has 1.6 million followers so his rare mistakes have a big impact, especially when he asks others to RT.
The Beat Cancer website states very clearly that this was an experiment that lasted for a specific period of time. I am in no way criticizing it. But experiments are always useful to learn from. Something that might be a consideration for future campaigns using social media is that through the process of retweeting some information often gets dropped out. In this case some people don’t realize that there was a specific time period that counted.
One thing that I have learned for sure, is that its a good idea not to use the word “today” in tweets if you are asking people to do something. http://beatcancereverywhere.com/about.html is extremely clear about exactly when the 24 hour time period began and ended but many people with large followings simply used the word today in their tweets.
Genesis, I don’t think that your comments were directed primarily at me. What you wrote was completely accurate. My only concern is that many people are continuing to use the hashtag with the belief that they are helping to raise money when that part of it has ended. Some people got the mistaken idea that every use of #beatcancer counted for a penny, rather than there being one single penny donation per tweet that used the hashtag. With nothing but good intentions they are sending out tweets that just list the hashtag over and over. At this point those tweets are simply spam.
In contrast there are some other people who are using the hashtag to show their support for people who are fighting cancer and to remember people close to them who died of cancer. Those tweets are quite moving.
My opinion is that this was a worthy experiment but like most experiments it has also provided information to shape future programs like this.
Hi Robin, – we didn’t know that Mashable is still asking people to use the hashtag – even if they do, it will no longer count for the Guinness record.
We contacted Tamara via email, we still wait for her answer – time difference :) – we are in Germany. It was late at night in Atlanta.
@Ian – this was not a chain letter, it was a social media campaign. If you watch the videos in the post you will see that Don Lemon, who is a CNN anchor, is one of the initiators.
@Everybody – we will publish a follow-up with more details.
I do not question that this was a legitimate campaign but according to http://beatcancereverywhere.com/about.html the 24 hour period for donations ended at 9:00am PDT on Sat. October 17. That is more than 12 hours ago. But many people do not realize that this campaign is over. A particular problem is that Mashable has twice sent out tweets asking people to use the #beatcancer hashtag after the 24 hour period ended. Is there anything that you can do to help spread the word that the hashtag campaign has ended? Many people are sending a large number of tweets in the mistaken belief that they are still helping to raise money for an excellent cause. You may have the ability to contact directly some of the people who have a very wide readership and very large followings and who mistakenly believe that the use of the hashtag is still raising money. I am not implying that anything that you wrote misled anyone. They somehow managed to get confused on their own. I just hope that you can help to correct the misinformation that so many people are acting on.
I’m really impressed that so many people would expend SO much energy worrying about something like this. If people had been asked to donate $100 in order to make this campaign work, I can understand, but seriously? A tweet? All this fuss over some tweets, which, like I mentioned earlier, are still going to boost awareness of cancer and cancer research.
As for the Guiness records, they ARE accepting social media records, but it is a very recent thing, as you will see on their facts page, here: http://community.guinnessworldrecords.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=7691&w=195789&d=155703
Phil, as you say many people, including me, have stories to tell about cancer in their lives, but those stories have nothing to do with trying to confirm something that I saw on the internet. I did not write or imply that anyone on this site was attempting to mislead or that they had something to gain by passing along this story. I never doubted that they believe it. What I did question was why no one was providing the research Mihaela claimed was done. If it makes me a cold hearted bastard to question and not to jump at every claim supposedly connected to a worthwhile cause then I can live with that.
On the other hand, I hope others trying to raise money for good causes will realize that just being associated with a cause and having a web page is not enough. If you want to reach the more skeptical people then be sure that there is a way for them to verify your claims. Or you can just write us off.
Well Skep, I hope that the questions have been answered at least to a degree. It was researched as best as could or needed to be just to report someone’s efforts and to support it with a little of ours.
Always,
Phil
I came here because I thought it was an interesting story and wanted to find out more, specifically whether it was genuine or a fake, and this is the only site that is reporting on it. Or rather, to put it more accurately, the source that all other sites are referring back to in their blogs.
I joined in the discussion in the comments because it seemed like the best place to ask in light of the above.
I am a sceptic. I like to think I don’t just believe things that are told to me without stopping and thinking about them first. I’ll take it at face value until I have more information to base an opinion on, and as I don’t think CNN broadcast here I still don’t have one. I take an interest in urban legends, hoaxes, myths and memes on the internet, so this one caught my eye.
I apologise for not thinking that ignorance is bliss.
Now, in case you are interested, I will explain why I first thought this could be a hoax.
It’s purely down to the similarities with the dozens of email hoaxes along the same lines: “forward this email and the make a wish foundation will donate 7c” etc, added to the fact that it is doubtable that beat cancer everywhere are even able to count the posts. On Twitter it is easy enough, on facebook you have to be friends with most people to see their status, the blogosphere is almost entirely uncountable especially between times/dates.
So yeah, I think it is entirely reasonable to question whether it’s genuine or not.
And finally: if the ebay/paypal & MillerCoors offer to donate *is* genuine … how would you feel if all the millions of blogs, tweets, status updates etc netted a $10 donation to charity and some Atlanta PR firm got their Guinness world record and all that free publicity from a viral marketing stunt?
BTW Phil, your domain registration expired on Thursday – renew it if you care. :)
No time for Unplugged these days Spadge, so domain is not a priority. Actually, that was supposed to be a lifetime thing that domain, I guess I should have been skeptical of the man who donated that for some work I did huh? :)
Phil
I’m not here to argue, and I’m sure nobody else here has spiteful intentions. Personally, I’m more interested in truth than opinions, so I’m happy to wait this one out and see where it leads, than speculate. I’m now 99% sure the #beatcancer fundraising thing is sadly a hoax, but would love to be proved wrong.
Here’s a quote from the Guinness World Records website for you all to chew on:
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/member/is_it_a_record.aspx
“Guinness World Records no longer accepts any records relating to chain letters or similar variations sent by post or e-mail. This is due to extensive problems following a previous record attempt.”
Oh I am so tired of this. Just tune into CNN and watch the story. Then doubt if you still want to. Doubt God, doubt kindness, doubt everything you want, but do it in your OWN box.
@Phil – the original meaning of spam in email and on usenet, before it came to just mean UCE, was the noise which drowned out the signal as in the Monty Python viking sketch. If there are a million tweets posted in 24 hours just to get a hash tag out there, then that is a problem; that is a million useless tweets that didn’t really need to happen (I know this sounds crazy to anyone who has ever spent any time actually reading twitter :D ). But really, on a free service like twitter that fairly regularly buckles under its own weight, it would be counter-productive at best.
@Mihaela – It is a sad and well documented story that God gave man free will. He may ask us to believe, but he allows us to doubt too. But let’s not get into that, as this issue has nothing at all to do with God, or religious beliefs of any kind, and I honestly don’t think you’re going to see a discussion along those lines that won’t cause offence to all parties.
So what you are saying Spadge is? You wanted us to? You need? Are we arguing that some money raised for cancer victims is? Spam, Oh I get it now. People who spend half their lives pecking out worthless bits of personal hygiene, or marketing products that make baby’s soft bottom even more adoreably soft do not need to waste their time on actually doing good unless? Oh, unless there is a JD Power and Associates PDF reporting and actually guaranteeing that something so obviously correct is correct? I am actually LMMFAO right now, but I intend to go have a drink and ponder the symbolic and impactful reality that people who think like this actually do exist. They really do.
Excuse me for going a little unplugged on this, because deep inside I know that an literal act of almighty Zeus would not reach within the case hardened heart or skull for that matter, of zealots so naturally imbued a talent for stoic and mathematical precision in their cynicism. Well, it is late here. It looks like I will not be sleeping sweetly, dreaming of the live oaks and them old cotton fields back home. I think Lowes had them all chopped down and the cotton all went to China to make shirts to sell back to Americans. And no small wonder. All the true zealots are out there in Twitter land worried about their bandwidth while back at the ranch, the country is shipped East or West or downright overturned. Unfortunately for my brother, and many thousands like him, this skepticism has been around just long enough for a cure for his cancer to not be at hand. Thank you so much for your hard earned Tweet. Don’t worry though, I will just make up the difference for you.
Always,
Phil
@Spadge – it is NOT an offer. It was a 24h campaign. It’s over now. It made it to the Guinness World – you made your contribution – one cent was donated for your hashtag.
As for my pity, whether you need it or not, it’s there because, believe it or not, I care for people. I never said it was wrong to be a skeptic, all I said was that skeptics are never happy – because they don’t dare to believe. God asks you to believe without question – it’s a metaphor, that means: open your heart to the good, to love, to hope. Don’t ask. Believe.
@Mihaela
There is nothing wrong with being a sceptic, and we are not in need of your pity.
I don’t know if this is a genuine offer or not. At first glance it smacks of the old (and much regurgitated) email scams – see these pages for lists of them: http://tw3.it/1Q6 and http://tw3.it/1Q7
I have tweeted asking if it is a hoax, but I’m not sure and I hope it isn’t and so I included the hash-tag in the tweet. If it turns out to be a hoax I won’t be disappointed, and if it turns out to be genuine I will be delighted. Someone who believed it without question would suffer the inverse reaction. So for whom does the light of true happiness shine after the fact?
LOL Those Tweets sure do come at a high price. I am happy to the almighty and Google too that there is no money involved for most of these people. If it cost 98 cents the poor cancer patients would not get an iTunes ring tone. Are you folks really taking the time to come here and question the validity of an outreach which would cost no one anything if it were a hoax save a Tweet?
I know it is hard to engage people on Twitter these days with all the marketers spamming it to death, but if 5 million people can Tweet about Ashton and Demi every other day, it seems taking the “risky” chance of a Tweet that could save an actual person’s life would not be the most risky proposition. Wow. I know, if this were a hoax then Cancer Research would be doomed on Twitter. I think if everyone were as anal retentive and negative as most coming here to hammer someone who just reported the news, we probably should all just hang it up. This is pitiful. Really.
Well, at least you can see we do not seed comments, or at least we are very slow in doing so :) I wonder why positive people do not comment more? Hmmm.
Always,
Phil
@Skeptikal – no one insulted you, my friend. You are constantly insulting us by saying that we do not verify what we publish. As I said, contacting sponsors of a social media campaign to verify was not necessary to RELATE the news. As you see in the updates to the article (the video I saw before Genesis published this, it just took me some time to find it again) we did everything humanly possible to prove that this is not a fraud. As for contacting sponsors, why don’t you do it on your own time?
Mihaela, you can insult me all you want, but when it comes to this report you confirmed what I said. No one checked with the alleged sponsors, so you couldn’t confirm that they were donating any money. Instead of being so sarcastic, perhaps you should have said who the people behind it are and why you think they are trustworthy. Expecting that someone should just believe what they read on the internet, but can’t confirm is asking people to be gullible. Scams and hoaxes litter the internet, so I’ll continue to question when people makes claims that seem to have little support.
Sleptical, Do you have the power to check some of these things? Or, would you prefer we expend every resource we ever had trying to certify beyond a shadow of a doubt everything you need to know? Mihaela and the team on that end did verify the validity as far as could reasonably be expected. People in the know on this confirmed the validity. No huge corporation is going to have a press conference every time they do something charitable. It is tacky in the first place. If the drive were successful, the news release is built in. Don’t you see that.
You have some valid points, but we are only resondible in as far as we are humanly capable of certifying these things. If this were a huge story, one of immeasurable gravity, or if there were indicators it was a farce, we would have checked much more deeply. As it was, everything was on the up and up. Why are you beating the drum over someone doing some good in this world? You need to win right? Do you need to win? Is winning an argument that important to you?
Okay Skeptical, as Senior Editor of Everything PR News, I personally apologize because I did not buy US Treasury Certificates to cover any loss you might incur because you bought this story (which BTW turns out to be true magically) hook line and sinker. I doubt the Bonds would have made a difference because you have the tone of one of the VC who always read my Web 2.0 stuff, who got burned by their Wall Street guy. :)
Always,
Phil
@Anastasia – it’s now official that it was not a hoax, but for me, the number of tweets, blog posts, facebook mentions, etc is a sign that many people still care about a good cause. I pity the skeptics, the non-believers. They must live in a very very sad world – a world of insecurity and doubt, a world of frustration, where the light of true happiness will never shine. How can anyone be happy by refusing the light that is given to them by the power of so many hearts?
I would just like to say that,even if this is not a hoax, there are so many viral things out there these days that even the appearance of it being a hoax can make some people shun tweeting or posting on Facebook. I usually check such things on snopes.com and if they don’t give it a green light, then I don’t post or tweet.
I was not able to find any info about this on snopes so I took that as a good sign, but I was still reluctant to tweet about it.
Anastasia, You are so correct. These things need to be on the up and up. This one obviously is, unless we are all being taken in (including CNN) by a scam which could only achieve? The problem with people is that they are skeptical when they should put their hearts in, and bit like piranha when they should not. Are they stupid? No not really, just unfortunately preyed upon too much. I will tell you a little story, perhaps it will not make sense and maybe no one will read it, but I am going to tell it any way. Before I do, let me say this. A boss of mine once told me that my biggest problem was the people do not believe someone could be so altruistic. They are so wrapped up in defense mechanisms that seeing someone act like (I did at that moment in time) me made them wonder what I was up to. I listened but did not fully understand until perhaps this very moment. People cannot see the truth most of the time, they have been hurt too much, or in the worst cases, their own mercenary thoughts make them think you are like them.
The story goes something like this. I was piddling my way around life, trying to make ends meet, not making all that much money way back when (it could have been yesterday for all you know) when I stopped at a grocery store to get some boxes to move. I was send around back to where the dumpsters were so that one of the bag boys could pass me some boxes out the back door. While waiting, I noticed a rather old African American man rummaging around in one of the dumpsters. It made me curious, and I was waiting after all. Being an affable young man, I asked the old gentleman if I could help as he looked like he was having trouble. He politely said no he was fine, and proceeded to tell me about how the store often threw away really good produce. The man was literally looking for something to eat.
To make the story more piognant, though it is an actual account, the polite old gentleman had a tumor on his neck about the size of a golf ball. It had to be painful and embarassing, but still he was more polite than ANY of these yahoos who come here to be “skeptical” in the face of good. Any way, to make a long story short (and I assure you not to lend any cudos toward me) I reached in my pocket and gave the man all the money I had. It turned out to be $50, which at the time was probably a lot. It was, actually, the last $50 I had to my name, but this was of no consequence. Do you know what the man said to me through tearful eyes? God Bless You Son. I could not contain my own emotion at that moment, I uttered as best I could these simple words (in the face of God actually) No Sir (you see he was older and South Carolina boys are taught to respect this) No Sir, I said, God Bless You.
I walked away as you might imagine, sort of ashamed of my tears (you see us South Carolina boys are taught to be tough too), thinking; “God, I wish I had had $500 bucks. I thought about this scene 1000 times since. Lost my blessing for the deed in all the telling of it to reveal the real world to people. You see, most thought I wanted some pat on the back, but I never did. Do you know what the first person who seemed like he needed that story in his life said to me? He listened impatiently and said; “He probably went and bought some wine with it.” So, in an effort to offer solice to another man in trouble, skepticism stole a gift from God Almighty literally. It did not matter what the man did with the money you see.
So, when I read all these comments. Especially one I read on these nice people’s site which was particularly nasty, I am rewarded by thoughts of how human beings once treated their savior. I am not a bible thumper, but no matter what religion or belief system you operate under, there comes a time to stand up. So, for no reward at all we could forsee, we took our time to help this cause. It was not worth much compared to Mashable’s effort (and I know Pete personally) but it did a part. All that can be asked of any of us. A great many people took their time, and in some cases money, to help in a small way. It may lead to great things, but even if it does not, the idea and ideal is what counts. We did what we could.
I hope my 20 minutes writing this helps you in some way. I hope it helps the others who are skeptical. Sometimes as human beings we must be shamed into correct action I know. It has happened to me when I thought incorrectly. Think how many suffer because we have all be preyed upon? I hope we can do better the next go around Anastasia. I really do.
Thanks
Always,
Phil
Skeptikal, use your better judgment. If it weren’t true, all these sponsors would have already published refutes or any material denying this. They had 24 hours time – and believe me, their PRs are fast.
It is not our job to contact the sponsors of such a campaign – at best to contact the initiators, who are very transparent and have public contact details displayed on the site. In this case, this was not necessary, because of who Tamara Knechtel is – among other accolades, someone who doesn’t hide after a nickname to post an opinion.
I JUST SAW IT ON HLN CABEL NEWS…SO I WENT TO MY FACEBOOK & TWEETER
AND PUT #beatcancer
I HAD BREAST CANCER 11 YEARS AGO..SO ANYTHING I CAN DO..I’LL DO.
Mihaela, am I allowed to be sarcastic too? Unless I can see into the future, there is no way for me to know what CNN is going to broadcast later. It’s a simple question which as yet no one on this site has seen fit to answer. How do you know that this is true? If you didn’t contact any of the sponsors, then aren’t you just relying on what you were told and in fact can not verify the truth is?