AUSTIN, Texas, March 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Ubershare.com, a new website that launched March 11 is putting its own information sharing technology to use to spread awareness for the Japan relief effort. The campaign has garnered support from more than 120 companies exhibiting at SXSW and strives to bring the Japan crisis and relief effort to the forefront of the Austin conference.
After launching its new sharing rewards platform, Ubershare.com, a site that enables people to offer and earn rewards for helping spread messages, quickly realized that its platform could be used to get the word out on the Japan relief effort.
Says Founder Jason White, “We noticed there were a few very respectable efforts at the South By Southwest conference to raise funds and awareness for Japan, but from our discussions with conference attendees, none of these efforts seemed to be getting significant exposure.” White added “SXSW seems to have an incredible mix of creative, brilliant and connected people who can use their resources to support this type of cause and we realized the technology we built in Ubershare to spread messages could be used to raise cause awareness within that community.”
To put its sharing rewards service to use, Ubershare published an announcement on its site with information about donating to the Red Cross and background on the existing SXSW relief effort. It then applied its own sharing rewards to the announcement, offering $1 in donations to the Red Cross, up to $10,000, for each person visiting www.ubershare.com/japan and using its tracked sharing system to spread the word. To encourage sharing, Ubershare additionally pledged a free SXSW 2012 conference pass to the person most actively spreading awareness.
Once the post went live on March 14, White jumped into action, printing hundreds of Japan awareness signs and scrambling to speak with the various companies exhibiting at the SXSW exhibition hall. Each company was invited to support the initiative by placing an awareness poster somewhere visible at their exhibition booths. By day’s end, more than 120 companies, each listed at the page www.ubershare.com/japan had pledged support by not only putting up posters, but using their social media channels to promote the initiative. Some offered financial matching support as well.
Says White about his company’s effort “We’re genuinely grateful but unsurprised by all the support. The South By Southwest community is incredibly caring, positive, and resourceful and we expected nothing less. But," adds White, “the only thing we actually care about is that folks spread awareness about this relief effort or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10.”
