Haiti Relief Effort Marks a Tipping Point for Mobile Charity

"Today is a huge day for mobile giving".- Says one Tony Aiello, CEO of mGive in this article on USNews. Mobile giving is set up through this company. It means that someone can send a text message or post a Facebook status about a certain cause and this company teams up with other companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, to make sure that once people do post these things to their site, that a monetary donation is made to a cause. This has been called a hoax by critics about Facebook and Twitter but the text message giving is very easy to calculate and watch. Twitter and Facebook are easily used to spread the word about these mGive movements but the real money is coming from people texting a certain word to a phone number and the money that they choose to give is being charged to their cell phone bills. This is a great way to raise awareness and help foreign countries and it only takes a second.  In one week, this company, mGive, had raised over $2 million for the Red Cross efforts in Hati. This would not be possible if it weren't for Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, text messaging and new communication technologies. I think that this effort is great and the fact that all of these social media outlets have been used to benefit such a great cause, that many other institutions should look into something like this to help raise money for their own causes and relief efforts.