Social Media Campaign to Beat Cancer Eyes Record in Guinness Book

October 16th, 2009 | by Adam Ostrow
Source: Mashable

Over the past few months, there’s been a tremendous amount of activity in utilizing social media for charitable causes. Perhaps the most notable recent example is Drew Carey’s bid of $1 million for the Twitter name @drew, with all of the proceeds being donated to cancer research.

Today, using the collection of hundreds of bloggers currently converged at Blog World Expo as an impetus, a social media fundraising effort is underway looking to set a Guinness Book World Record “for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media” in a 24 hour period.

The concept is rather simple. For every tweet, Facebook status update, or blog post containing the #beatcancer hashtag, eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors will be donating 1 cent to cancer research. With a captive audience of social media addicts, the hope is that the campaign will go viral and raise significant money for several charities.

More details are available on the beatcancereverywhere.com website, along with badges that you can embed on your blog to further expand the reach of the campaign. The site is also tracking total mentions, so you can see how the campaign is progressing throughout the day.