It’s confirmed. Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Justin Timberlake, MTV’s cast of “The Buried Life” and Lady Gaga have all died; digitally.
These are just a handful of the celebrities who have signed on to sign off of their Facebook and Twitter accounts (beginning on World AIDS day; December 1) until $1 million has been raised for the “Keep a Child Alive (KCA)” organization.
KCA was co-founded by its digitally dead global ambassador Alicia Keys. The organization focuses on providing treatment and care to children and families in Africa and India who are affected by HIV/AIDS.
If you’re having a hard time dealing with the loss of Kim K.’s twitpic updates, the best thing you can do (for you and the greater good) is to donate to KCA. There are a multitude of ways you can contribute to the campaign – the easiest of which being a one time donation of $5 by texting the word “ALIVE” to 90999. As of this post (Dec. 5, 2010), $290,656 has been donated.
Kim’s last tweet and testament can be seen below:
I applaud the “Buy Life/Digital Death” campaign for coming up with a creative way to leverage the power of social media to bring in donations. The combination of celebrity Facebook/Twitter influencers, promotional YouTube videos, and eye-catching staged death photography makes for a unique campaign that succeeds in getting people to pause and wonder “what’s that about?”
I can only wonder if KCA’s “Digital Death” will serve as the template for future non-profit social media campaigns aimed at increasing online donations.
