14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter can be used for many things, some superficial, some more important. Most of the time things fall into the first category but every once in a while some manage to harness the power of Twitter and social media in general to actually do something positive and with a real impact. Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and has been using Twitter to raise donations for the Livestrong foundation through the very popular #blamedrewscancer campaign.
As one of the earlier adopters of Twitter, Drew managed to get the @drew username which he is now auctioning off for charity. With four-letter Twitter usernames basically impossible to come by and more than a few Drew's with deeper pockets on Twitter the idea seemed reasonable enough. Drew initially said he would consider any offer over $10,000 and anyone on Twitter can bid using the #drewbid hashtag. Twitter usernames are of course non transferable and can't be sold according to the site's policy but this particular case has @ev's (Twitter's cofounder Evan Williams) blessing.
Soon after announcing the charity bid, TV show host Drew Carey pledged $25,000 for the name, a sizable sum by any account. He also said that he would donate $100,000 if he could get 100,000 Twitter followers by the time the bid would end, on November 9. At the time he had 13,000 followers so it looked like the target was attainable but not exactly easy to reach.
Just a few days later though he was already at 50,000 followers prompting to increase the stakes by a significant amount and Drew Carey now claims he will donate $1 million if he manages to reach 1 million followers by the year's end. There are plenty of Twitter users with more followers than that but the number is still rather high, which is why he will also “pro rate” the donation meaning that 500,000 followers will result in a $500,000 pledge. Given that he managed to gain several tens of thousands of followers in just a few days he may just be able to reach his new target.