Famous for 15 minutes

Charity viral follow up

Firstly a very happy New Year to you. Hope that you had a good festive period and 2009 proves better for us all than seemingly any media commentator is willing to predict it might be. Well one of the first tasks of my New Year is to wrap up on the Charity Christmas viral we posted. I'll admit that we probably had the idea a bit late in the day, but at the same time we're pretty dissapointed by the uptake as we only had 25 people commenting and 26 charities nominated. I guess the lesson is that despite the slow down people were still busy in the run up to and over Christmas - but it also shows that for things to go really viral you have to tap into a particular type of user and community who are happy to fling such links around. Clearly we're currently tapping into polite society where many prefer to keep their charity allegiances private (very Smashy & Nicey "we don't like to talk about it mate!") or else haven't quite grasped the potential of the web and the power of using their contacts for good. All that said I think we'll probably try it again this year, and give it more time and a greater push - but if you're reading this and recall ignoring the tweet (Twitter communication) or email I sent you then hang your head in Scrooge like shame. So - the results. They were as follows:

• Woodland Trust - 7 votes
• Macmillan - 7
• Rainbow trust - 1
• Help for Heroes - 1
• MSF - 1
• Alzhiemers - 1
• Help the Aged - 1
• Shelter - 1
• Amnesty - 1
• Age Concern - 1
• Leukeamia Research - 1
• JDRF - 1
• Marie Curie - 1

A tie then. So what we're going to do is quadruple the overall votes (because we're nice like that) and split it between the two run away winners. I'll therefore send a cheque out today to both the Woodland Trust and Macmillan for £52 each. So thanks for those that did vote - sorry if I didn't push it hard enough for those who missed it - and if you're reading this and feeling even a little bad about not partaking then maybe drop a chunky golden coloured coin or two of your own in a charity box on the way home to see if that gives a readybrek like glow to start the year (keeping out the chill and all that). Happy New Year :)