Videos, images and events going viral online is nothing new, we’ve seen animals doing ridiculous things, cute kids singing songs and extravagant marriage proposals, all of which spread around the internet like an adorable virus.
Social media has become the go-to method for companies to make their mark, attract their audience and create a buzz around their products. This is also true for charities. They can now publicise their cause, inform more people than ever on how to donate and reach billions of people will emotive campaigns that can be shared across dozens of media platforms.
One event in particular had an entire city playing a game of make believe, which then became an internet sensation. The Make-A-Wish charity gave a 5 year old boy called Miles, who has been fighting Leukaemia, the day of his life, when they turned San Francisco into Gotham, dressed him up as Batkid and set up fake scenarios for him to save the day. This was one child, one wish and one charity, and it became global.
The community got involved and cheered Miles along on his day of being the city’s superhero. Many even made posters and banners, wishing him luck in defeating the bad guys.
San Francisco has one of the world’s largest percentage of smartphone users, so this event was bound to hit the internet fast.
On the day of Batkid’s grand San Francisco adventure, there were over 400,000 tweets featuring the #batkid or #SFBatkid hashtags, and news articles on the day’s events were shared thousands of times. According to Twitter, Batkid was discueed in 117 countries and approximately 14% of the tweets came from outside America. Even Barack Obama himself sent a video message on Twitter to the tiny superhero, congratulating him on saving Gotham.
It was a heart-warming, clever and very human event, one that brought together a community and allowed one little boy his biggest wish of being Batkid for the day.
It proved the power of social media, with photos, videos and tweets making their way around the internet, cementing this wonderful day in history forever.
