Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian’s Digital Death Not Moving People

One week into their Digital Life Sacrifice for the Keep a Child Alive AIDS charity, celebrities like Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian and Alicia Keys are nowhere close to their target.

The digital silence hoped to raise US$1 million for charity, and the celebrities pledged to a period of non-activity on Twitter, Facebook and the like until the target has been met. At the time of this report, the amount raised was US$298,397.

At this rate, it’ll be awhile until the personalities resume their normal social media activity; and to help the cause, Keep a Child Alive has cut the minimum donation amount in half to US$5.

It’s for a worthy cause, but it looks like celebrities’ tweets aren’t enough to get people to open up their checkbooks.

More Money Spent Online this Year Over Last: Study

 

For the first 33 days of the November to December holiday season this year, a total of US$16.8 million was spent online, according to a comScore study. This amount is a 12% increase over the corresponding days last year.

Cyber Monday became the heaviest online spending day on record, bringing in a total of US$1 billion. Black Friday, on the other hand, brought in US$648 million. Both figures are higher than the ones witnessed in 2009.

However, growth slowed to “single-digit levels” after Cyber Monday, said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a statement.

“We believe this softening is attributable to retailers’ heavy discounting and promotional activity during the earlier part of the holiday season, which pulled some consumer demand forward, resulting a mild hangover effect in the days immediately following Cyber Monday,” Fulgoni said.