Two weeks ago disaster struck Haiti in the form of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Last week, Zynga created the Relief Fund for Haiti to raise money to give to the UN World Food Programme to use in Haiti. Five days after Zynga started the relief fund, they have already gathered over $1.5 million from users in over 47 countries!
Zynga encouraged Facebook gamers by selling limited edition virtual items in their games, such as the white corn in FarmVille, the Haitian Drum in Mafia Wars, and the special chip package in Zynga Poker. All profits from these items went to the fund. To encourage Facebook users further, the company promised a special prize for all players, if the Relief Fund reached $1 million. In addition, other online users could donate directly to the fund through Zynga’s webpage.
From this experience, it is undeniable that there are many helpful souls out there, even if they appear not to be concerned because their eyes seem to be stuck to their computer screens. In addition, Zynga has over 1 billion monthly active users in just the three games mentioned above. The game with the biggest number of monthly active users is FarmVille, with almost 75 million. Because Zynga could reach this many users, it is not a wonder that they could also raise enough funds for Haiti.
12 January 2010, Tuesday, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck a small country south-east of the US called Haiti. The quake destroyed almost every building, left thousands homeless, and killed an estimate of 50 to 200 thousand people.
Thankfully, many people rushed to help, including those who seem they wouldn’t bother: the Facebook gamers and developers.
To help raise funds, Zynga created the Zynga Haiti Relief Fund. All profits will go to the United Nations World Food Programme (www.wfp.org) to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake. To raise funds they are offering limited edition items in their top games:
- In FarmVille, virtual farmers can buy white corn for 25 Farm Cash ($5). This corn will not wither even if it is not harvested for a week.
- In Mafia Wars, there is the Haitian Drum
- In Zynga Poker, there is a special chip package that gives the user a premium rare item
People can also donate directly to the Zynga Haiti Relief Fund by going to Zynga’s website (http://one.wfp.org/donate-haiti/index.html). Presently, the Facebook game developer has already collected over 900 thousand dollars for the Haiti earthquake victims!
With Facebook’s 350 million users, alone, the appeal for help for the Haitians has intensified. Even though it is not known how much was donated by Facebook users, what is known is that within just 24 hours, the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) raised £8 million; while the Red Cross, in just 48 hours, received $35 million worth of donations! The pouring of donations for Haiti is clearly greater than in any previous disasters that happened before the popularity of social networking sites.
This just proves that social networking sites and online games help the world, too!
