One lucky Twitter user will soon have the chance to amplify their voice—400,000 times. Safe drinking water charity Water.org is offering up control of @water for one week.
The contest, dubbed a “#twakeover,” runs until the end of the month with the contestant garnering the most votes — and, presumably, the most attention to the www.water.org Web site — getting the right to run Water.org’s Twitter handle for five days in September.
Nonprofit relief organization Water.org works to provide safe drinking water to communities in Africa and Asia.
“Say ‘hi’ to mom, talk toilets, link to a great photo, or just motivate people to care,” the group said on the website promoting the contest.
@compassion, the Twitter handle of Christian-relief nonprofit Compassion International, was leading the contest Thursday morning with 953 votes. Water.org is billing the contest as the first-ever takeover of a Twitter account.
Anyone with a Twitter account can sign up for the contest on the #twakeover portion of the Water.org Web site. After signing up, contestants get a dedicated page where they can send followers to cast votes for their bid. However, @water’s handlers aren’t taking a chance that the account will end up in the hands of a spammer or someone who will stray too far from its mission: all Tweets will have to be approved ahead of time.
“I want to protect ourselves from a Weiner moment,” Mike McCamon of Water.org told Mashable earlier this month, a reference to the New York Congressman who was forced to resign after posting scanitly clad photos, accidentaly, to his public Twitter feed.