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I have been fascinated and also a bit impressed to see the impact social media have had the last two weeks on fundraising and relief efforts for Haiti. There’s been an explosion of pleas for help on sites like twitter and facebook, for example. But something I never thought I’d see happen has taken centerstage in the relief effort: texting a donation. I guess I always thought of texting as relatively useless. Well, not entirely useless – but why do teens text so much when they could just pick up the phone and call each other? I felt like it had taken the place of face-to-face and phone-to-phone communication. So with that in mind, it’s nice to be wrong about something. Texting is not useless. It’s being used now to show an entire generation that they can make a difference. The text donations work like this - you text the word "Haiti" to 90999, and the Red Cross gets a $10 donation that shows up on your cell phone bill. (There are, of course, other ways to give and to help - I just figured I couldn't talk about texting a donation if I didn't tell you how.) The map shows the percentage of donations by cell phone, by state, as of Tuesday, January 19th.
