Twitter, Facebook and Google embrace World AIDS Day

Twitter supports the #red appeal
Twitter supports the #red appeal

The social-networking side of the World Wide Web has embraced the concept of World AIDS Day, by changing the colour of their homepages to red.

Twitter has gone all out and turned its pages red, and even Google has got into the act by adding a World AIDS Day ribbon to its search screen (US only).

Facebook has gone a step further and is encouraging its members to sign up and join red, which would change their logo to a red logo. If users don't want to replace their image, then they can share a video about World AIDS Day and a direction to the red shop, where you can buy red laces to promote the charity.

Helping spread the word

"At Twitter, we're making it fun and easy to spread the word about this preventable and treatable disease that is hitting Africa the hardest," notes the Twitter blog.

"If you use any of the following terms below today on Twitter your tweet will turn red. Today is World AIDS day, help us spread the word."

The terms to turn your tweets red are as follows:

#red donates 100% of the profit to the Global Health Fund
@joinred is the official account of the (RED) campaign
40 cents can keep someone with AIDS alive
World AIDS Day is the perfect day to tweet for a cause
AIDS affects 33 million people around the world
Africa is where 22 million of these people live
HIV is a virus that can be expelled
#laceupsavelives is Nike's own campaign

Get tweeting!

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.