1 million shirts
Or: Why the 1 Million T-Shirts x Twitter is the most important thing happening in Tech4Dev on Wednesday, 28 April 2010.
This is how realtime information will inform the future of development work.
A guy came up with an idea: "Let's collect 1 million t-shirts from the US and send them to Africa." Ok. It's an obviously bad idea. It's probably a viral promotion for his own company. It was covered by Mashable on Tuesday the 27th of April. None of this is revolutionary.
The guy social-mediazed his "idea". That's how you go viral. "Hey, twitter, facebook, THE INTERNETS...let's collect 1 million t-shirts...." This is what one does, these days. Make it public, and put it out there. It's an idea for "aid" to "Africa." Why not. It's got a hokey website that said (as of Wednesday, 28 April) "625 shirts collected." Inflamatory. engaging. Also not revolutionary.