Twitter is all the rage in social media circles. Instead of taking the time to write out yet another “10 Reasons to use Twitter” or “50 Twitter Rules” and post it online*, I’d like to explore a more recent Twitter event: Twestival.

Twestival is a global coordinated fundraising effort for charity:water.  For those of you wondering what charity:water does, they are a non-profit organization with a mission to bring clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Twestival’s goal, on February 12, 2009, was to have as many cities around the world host events to gather people to have fun and raise awareness and money for charity:water.  As a side note, charity:water is near and dear to us here at Outrider because we did some pro bono search marketing work for them in 2008 as part of our Outrider Outreach program.

Below is a quick video explaining charity:water’s goals with Twestival.

Onto the phenomenon that was Twestival. A recent article on Mashable by Amanda Rose, Twestival’s global organizer, has stated that Twestival has raised over $250K for charity:water. The event brought together nearly 1,000 volunteers organizing themselves to host events in over 200 cities around the world. In all, more than 10,000 people attended. What makes this fundraiser interesting is the fact that people were able to donate via Twitter’s online donation site, Tipjoy. In total, Tipjoy was able to raise over $26K from 961 Twitter users. In fact, people are still tweeting about its success as we speak.

I love this story for its charitable aspect, but also for its ability to use social media to initiate fundraising that spanned past the online space and into the real world. I hope to see more of these fundraisers in the social media space in 2009.

For more information on Twitter’s charitable efforts, please visit:
Tweetsgiving

For those of you interested in a great Twitter resource, try:
Twitip