Twestival, taking place on Thursday 12th February 2009, is a global charity event set up by users of the popular micro-blogging site, Twitter. It's not a showcase of the latest technological developments, but rather an event to highlight one of the main problems that blights underdeveloped countries.Twitter is a service that allows users to communicate and stay connected - responding to the question, 'What are you doing?' - via short blog posts of up to 140 characters. Twitter's popularity has grown very quickly since it became established in 2007 and the company was even subject to an attempted acquisition from popular social networking site, Facebook.
The overall aim of the festival is to raise money for not-for-profit organisation Charity:Water - whose mission is to bring safe, clean drinking water to developing countries. The event will take place in the evening and it is hoped that it will raise both money and awareness. It is hoped that cash will be raised through donations, participation in one of their online fundraising activities or through attendance to one of the events - 100 percent of the ticket prices goes directly to Charity:Water and every Twestival is organised by volunteers from each city around the world.
Twestival initially began as a one-off event in London, UK in September 2008; however, its popularity was to prove the basis for this expanded range of events. In terms of Twitter-based promotion for each Twestival city, there is one main Twestival portal, which then links to the site of each city in question - here you can find all the relevant updated information, blog posts and video content.
The live events are taking place in 100 international cities that will be holding the event; and at least 50 of which are U.S. based. It has been reported that it took only 24 hours for 40 of the major cities to agree to hold Twestival, whilst the other cities followed suit shortly after. The major cities that will be organising Twestival includes London, Edinburgh, New York, San Francisco, Melbourne, Sydney, Vancouver and Toronto.
The introduction of this event displays how communication tools such as those offered by Twitter can help individuals come together to fight for social change. Let's hope that it's only a taste of things to come.
