Refuge domestic violence campaign boosted by Fry tweet
A social media campaign for domestic violence charity Refuge has been given a boost after Stephen Fry and fellow celebrities endorsed it on Twitter.
With more than 1.8m followers digital evangelist Fry is one of the world's most popular tweeters. His tweet encouraging people to back Refuge's campaign and sign its petition to government has helped it reached more than 7,000 signatures.
Claudia Winkleman, Amanda Holden, Lorraine Kelly, Fay Ripley, Angela Griffin, Jenny Faulkner and Lauren Laverne also retweeted Fry's message.
After just one day the campaign's Facebook page, created by Manchester digital agency Code Computerlove, was 'liked' by more than 1,000 people. Around 3,000 invited their social media networks to sign the petition.
Code's Tony Foggett said: "Due to the unpredictability of social media campaigns, we'd geared up for any peaks in awareness and surges in signatures, and negotiated a discounted rate on bandwidth usage with UK Grid. But getting the support of such high profile social media users was more than we could have hoped for and very nearly toppled the back office system!
"It really does demonstrate the effect social media can have on getting messages out there."