Seeing Red for Comic Relief
February 25th, 2009 by Rob Brown
People are painting social networks red to publicise their support for Comic Relief. Individuals are changing their profile pictures on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere to red squares to demonstrate their allegiance to the charity. As red nose day approaches expect these square to pop up all over the social media space. It already has the backing of high profile media influencers Chris Moyles producer (@ahf on twitter) was one of the first to go red.
This phenomenon is not entirely new. In the last ten days campaigners have been using black squares to show their opposition to New Zealand’s controversial ‘three strikes’ copyright law which would mean that if a person is accused of downloading copyrighted material three times their internet account would face closure - even if there is no proof to the allegations.
Stephen Fry was one of the highest profile campaigners replacing his Twitter picture with a black square. There is no hard evidence that the campaign worked but New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has revealed that the implementation of the law will now take place on 27 March this year.
Tags: black profile, black square, campaign, Comic relief, Facebook, profile picture, red, red profile, red square, social networks, socnets, twitter
February 25th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
It’s such a simple way to show your support to a campaign, and it’s great seeing everyone you’re following getting behind a cause - it just goes to demonstrate how powerful social media can potentially be and how well it can unite people, some of whom, may never have ever met face to face.