What is Digital Death? Celebs Are Signing-Off To Raise Awareness

If your Lady Gaga twitter feed isn't its usual self on November 30th, don't worry your Twitter account is not malfunctioning.

As part of a new campaign called Digital Life Sacrifice, celebs like Gaga, Alicia Keys, J. Timberlake and many more, will be signing off of their social media pages on behalf of World AIDS Day. The "Digital Death" of these celebrities on Facebook and Twitter aims to bring attention to the millions of unheard voices dying from AIDs around the world. The participating celebrities will remain logged-off of their accounts from the 30th until the Keep A Child Alive charity has raised $1 million in donations.

Video clips depicting each of the celebs laying in a coffin will be the last post on their pages until the charity meets its goals. Sounds pretty jarring but I guess that is the point. Its kind of sad that it takes a "digital death" of a celebrity on Twitter to get people's attention on such a serious global issue...but nevertheless it is always good to see the power of social media being reinvented for the betterment of humanity.

Combined, Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys have approximately 9.8 million followers on Twitter. With such a huge reach, Keep A Child should be able to reach their goal and ten fold. Gaga follower or not, if you are interested in making a donation you can do so here.

Whether critics find the "digital death" idea preposterous or not, the campaign should serve as an interesting case study on the relations between charities and social media fundraising.

Definitely stay tuned.