Twitter is a popular means of spreading the word about blood donation requests

“REQ B-VE AT #St. John’s, Bangalore.CONTACT Raju Sriram 9972833xyz.”

This is one of the recent tweets by tweet4blood, a profile created by Bengaluru-based engineer Thejesh GN to reach out to the Twitterverse for blood donations. Thej, who is an active Tweeter with 1,747 followers, created the profile a year ago when a friend’s dad urgently needed a blood donation.

“I tweeted about it and got a good response, so I thought, why not use the social media for a good cause. I have created a website, tweet4blood.com where anyone can submit a request by entering the blood type required, the hospital, city and their contact details.
tweet4blood tweets these requests and spreads the word on Twitter,” Thej tells us. His reward for this work? “Sometimes I get thank you messages from people whose requests have been answered and several times, I get messages from people saying that they contacted the applicant and found out that they’ve already got the blood.”

Celebrities, from Preity Zinta to Gul Panag and even namma hudugi Ramya often retweet blood donation requests. Social media professional, Hrish Thota points out, “Considering that they have thousands of followers, it’s a powerful tool for spreading the word.
And every time a person retweets a message, the reach grows exponentially.”

Hrish also doesn’t hesitate to tweet and retweet blood requests to his 2,948 followers.

Software engineer Tinu Cherian, who has a massive following of 8,002 followers, believes that Twitter is the perfect platform for `crowdsourcing’, be it for blood donations or any other cause. “Twitter is the place where you can constantly send out information to the crowds and receive instant responses. The microblogging site has been used for various campaigns in the past and I believe, it can really contribute towards saving a life.”

Tweeple, if you see a blood donation request, don’t hesitate to RT. Who knows, one of your followers may save a life.

Article by TENZIN DECHEN, DECCAN CHRONICLE 7 April 2010
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tabloids/how-save-life-021