Twenty-first century phenomenon Twitter has been used by the National Trust of Scotland to raise money for a museum to honour the birthplace of a 250-year old poet.

The Trust ran a fundraising campaign on the micro-blogging website over the Burns' Day weekend to raise money for the building of the Robert Burns' Birthplace Museum. Some £4m of the £21m needed to build the museum still remains to be raised.

Final figures are still being collated and money is still being accepted in what the Trust claims is the first time a charity has used Twitter to fundraise.

Every time a person donated money to the campaign via Twitter, a line of Robert Burns poetry appeared on the Twitter page of the campaign's avatar ‘@ayrshirebard' along with a personal recognition of the donor. Due to technical issues, the campaign organisers asked for a donation of US$2 rather than pounds.

Craig McGill, account director at DADA which developed the campaign for the Trust, said: "It has been quite eye-opening in what can be achieved online and how it needs to be done to be a success, so the experience was welcome. It's also taken Burns from being the 1,000th or so ranked Scottish Twitterer to 35th, which was quite an achievement."

Global Twitter fundraising festival

Meanwhile, preparations are under way around the world for the first global Twestival. More than 110 cities, from Taipei to Tel Aviv, are to host events for Twitter users to meet in real life in a bid to raise money for the US development non-profit, charity: water.

As the events are totally volunteer-organised, the total sum of money donated on the day will be delivered to the charity. Each city has been given the target of raising US$4,000 for the organisation.

Such is the popularity of the real-life meeting that the London Twestival has already sold out.

Alongside the real-life event, Twitter users have created Twestivalfm, another fundraising effort in which users donate their own music tracks and listeners are then encouraged to make a gift to the charity.

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Twitter campaign raises money for Robert Burns museum

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