The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has generated a fair amount of debate. Rich Becker sums up the arguments in support and against #IceBucketChallenge here. Whatever your perspective, you can’t argue with the windfall of $88.5 million and 1.9 million new donors that the campaign has raised to date.
Today I received an email from a PR firm answering one of the questions I’ve had about the campaign: has the #IceBucketChallenge made a splash outside North America? I am connected to a lot of people around the world, but haven’t really seen anyone outside of my American and some Canadian friends posting about the campaign.
Well it turns out there’s at least one other region where #IceBucketChallenge has caught on: China.
On China’s Weibo platform, over 1.58 million users have talked about #IceBucketChallenge, and a total of 1.43 billion people have viewed posts about the topic. Chinese internet users, from tech billionaires to celebrities have taken the icy bath in support of the charity. In comparison, people have shared 1.2 million videos on Facebook and mentioned the phenomenon 2.2 million times on Twitter.
More importantly, Weibo’s users are also contributing to the cause and have donated almost $400,000–a fraction of the total collected so far, but I would guess that the ALS Association does not typically see very many donations from China.
Is #IceBucketChallenge a hit in your country, as well? Let us know!
