KONY 2012: It's gone viral
Just this week the campaign has gone viral with Twitter users around the world have inundated the micro-messaging site with calls to stop the Lord's Resistance Army and its leader Joseph Kony.
Messages tagged #StopKony2012 and #MakeKonyFamous lit up Twitter for the better part of the morning today, and were listed among the top trending topics worldwide.
Invisible Children, which is solely focused on bringing an end to the Lord's Resistance Army, started the online campaign to bring attention to a new film on the subject called "Kony 2012."
This is interesting because the Invisible Children have really done their homework on the use of social media and are rolling out the campaign across all platforms from Twitter to Facebook to Vimeo (see the video here) and back again and inbetween.
The Lord's Resistance Army started in northern Uganda in the late 1980s as a rebellion against the country's armed forces. Under the leadership of Joseph Kony, the group evolved into a militant cult that has forcibly recruited thousands of children into its ranks, mutilated or killed tens of thousands of people across Central Africa and displaced many more.
The topic gained momentum with the help of some celebrity heavyweights, including American singers Taylor Swift and Rhianna, who have both endorsed the Invisible Children campaign on the site.
To give an idea of just how much sway these celebrities have on Twitter, keep in mind that Rhianna has more than 14-million followers, which makes her more popular than Barack Obama.
The Lord's Resistance Army, once thought to number in the thousands, is now believed to consist of only a couple hundred fighters.
But even in small numbers, the group has continued to attack villages in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
It will be interesting to see where this campaign goes - what do you think?
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