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1 Million Tweetshirts - How to Fail Fast and With Scrutiny

Countries:
United States

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.