Its name sounds like a Monty Python sketch, but this particular group of twits is actually set on doing some useful. TwitCause, a new viral tool, aims to Twittify the social-responsibility-networking phenomenon popularized by the Causes tool on Facebook and MySpace. According to its Twitter bio, TwitCause “helps nonprofits get discovered on Twitter and enables passionate people to support the causes they care about.”
The tool uses Twitter’s classic viral news technique of encouraging participants to spread the news on a certain charity through their own Twitter feeds, much like people do on Charity Tuesday.
Here’s how it works: follow @TwitCause to see the cause of the week, then retweet its postings, thereby spreading the word about the featured organization. The week’s cause will be featured on the TwitCause site, with link to a donation page (this week’s cause, for example. is the Humane Society). The site also lets you vote on the next cause you’d like to see featured (should next week’s be LIVESTRONG, Red Cross or Greenpeace?) and see recent relevant tweets.
The Experience Project, which runs TwitCause and identifies itself as “the world’s largest living collection of shared experiences” and “the premier passions-based network,” has a goal of “putting the meaning back in social networking.” Spreading the word about nonprofit organizations is certainly one way to go about that worthy project.
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