Women Try to Promote Breast Cancer Awareness by Telling Personal Information on Facebook

Earlier on the morning of January 7th, 2010, I saw a few strange statuses from two of my friends on Facebook. Their status simply said "white". That's it, no explanation, nothing else. When questioned, these two friends mostly replied with teasing comments which only further confused anyone reading. A few hours later, I saw a different friend posting the same color... "white". This friend did not know the other two so I figured there must be something going on that I was missing.

After visiting google, I found out exactly what was going on. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness, women were spreading the word to change their Facebook status to indicate their bra color. It was not until later in the evening that the colors really started flying in on my news feed - purple, blue, tan, green and polka dots! All I could think was - I don't really want to know what color bra all my friends are wearing.

Finally I received my own message from a girl friend telling me to change my status. "Write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY gals no men .... It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status... LOL"

I didn't do it, and I won't be doing it, and even after getting the message I'm still not sure that this sort of game really spreads awareness. First of all, it's supposed to be a secret game. People don't know why you changed your status to white, blue, or whatever. So as a secret game, how is it actually spreading awareness? Second, most of my friends changed their status to something else within 20 minutes to an hour so it wasn't even up long enough for everyone to get "aware" of Breast Cancer. Instead, I figured a better way to spread awareness would be to write this article explaining the status updates for those that are confused and also to include some links where you can actively support Breast Cancer research (see below).

After googling some more, I see this has been going on for at least a week throughout Facebook, but it didn't hit my group of friends and family until today. When it did hit, it hit hard covering most of my High School friends, Grade School friends, Family and Current friends. The fact that it hit different groups of people who don't even know each other really shows the power of Facebook and the power of viral marketing. Had these women actually spread a concrete status such as "click here to donate to Breast Cancer Research", millions of dollars could have been raised to a worthy cause. Instead, this game spread like hotcakes, leaving people confused at every turn.

Where did this all begin? I can't seem to pinpoint an answer to that. Regardless of where it started I'm sure it will blow over quickly like many Facebook trends and in a week no one will remember it and the Breast Cancer cause won't be any better for it. However seeing how so many people quickly do what they are told on Facebook proves that there is a huge potential for viral marketing with this site. It looks to be a great way for charities to spread the word and ask for donations for important research. However, who knows how many donations one would actually get! Will these women put their money where their mouth is and donate to Breast Cancer research? Will they even take the time to click a free link to donate once a day? Or will they just post their bra color for an hour and then forget about it completely? I am guessing the later but writing this article in hopes it convinces people to do the first!

Do your part to help end Breast Cancer, and spread a link or two to your friends on Facebook to do the same, to actually make a difference and support the cause.

A Click a Day to End Breast Cancer - Click on this site once a day and sponsors will donate a free mammogram
Click to Cure Breast Cancer - Similar to above, sponsors will donate to research for every click you make. Includes an easy way to spread this message on Facebook!
Breast Cancer Research Foundation - Here you will learn various ways to donate, 'shop pink' and help support Breast Cancer research
Join in on the 3-Day - This 3-Day Breast Cancer walk brings women together all over the US to bond while they help raise money for the cause. I have only just learned about these walks and hope to be able to join in one some day! If you can't do the walk, you can still visit this site to donate to participants.

Example status message to post to your Facebook:
If you want to do something to help cure Breast Cancer - click here once a day to donate to research. It's free! Spread this to your friends: http://www.care2.com/click-to-donate/breast-cancer/ and bookmark it so you can do it again every day!

There are many other ways to get involved. Just search Breast Cancer and you will find tons of sites out there looking to help the cause. Do something today, but don't just change your Facebook status to state your bra color for 20 minutes and think you did enough.