Stephen Fry re-tweets Adopt A Word and crashes site 1

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 9 Dec 2009

The tremendous power of a Stephen Fry tweet was again felt by children’s communication charity I CAN after a Twitter post about the organisation’s Adopt A Word campaign caused the website to crash.

Months after first adopting his word ‘wordy’, as part of I CAN’s virtual gift campaign which allows donors to ‘adopt’ a virtual word for a fee, on Sunday 6 December Fry again tweeted to his more than one million followers in support of the campaign.

He wrote that while he had taken the word 'wordy', many thousands more were up for grabs on the Adopt A Word site.

Fry’s tweet resulted in more than ten times more visitors to the site – from 800 to 8,000 - and prompted a huge spike in donations, from 15 word sales on the previous Wednesday to 200 on the day of his tweet.

The charity was so inundated with traffic, that it was forced to let through just one in three visitors to access the site after it was back live.

“This is of course a fantastic outcome – we hope he continues to enjoy his influence,” said a spokeswoman for the charity.

Directory: Ican

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Ed Hart
Director
Your Financial Business Support
9 Dec 2009

Given the extreme nature of this story, I can understand why it was reported. What I find frustrating is the ongoing misunderstanding about the power of Social Media (albeit on a much smaller scale) on an every day basis. Businesses that are embracing the "new" means of influencing their audience are reaping huge benefits.

Even as a freelance finance director, I am encouraging firms to see through the sensationalism, and grasp the business opportunities on a daily basis.

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