Its been a year since I launched @tweet4blood with VSR‘s help. It’s not a great geek work, it’s a simple two page application based on twitter api. It didn’t take more than an hour to design and code the app. But for me its been one of the happiest moment as I was trying to use technology and social media in use.

Ever since I launched it, I have been thinking about its success. Is it number of page views? or news paper coverages? or is the number blood requests? But then I thought number of blood donations made due to tweet4blood is the right measure. Even though I couldn’t track it properly, followers of tweet for blood were very kind to send some responses. I am pasting two such mails verbatim here.

1. First Response
“I am a regular blood donor. I always look for opportunities to donate blood the moment three months pass since my last donation. I have registered with multiple blood banks and websites to alert me whenever they need blood of my type in the vicinity. But such systems have turned passive and I started visiting blood banks to donate blood instead of donating it for a person who is in immediate need, admitted in a hospital.

Few months back I came to know about tweet4blood. It is the twitter way of spreading the message for any blood requirements. Since people tweet with blood type, location and phone number, it becomes easy for me to get in touch with the patient and do my best. Earlier, I remember, I used to receive bulk mails for blood donation requests. But things such as tweet4blood have made things easier. My only concern is, India’s poor, who are not exposed to communication channels like emails are twitters may be suffering. We need to address this concern.
- @sharadaprasad
”

2. Second response
“Social networking is a lot of hype and little substance. It is difficult to find a functional application of a social networking platform that does not include a heavy dose of self-aggrandizement. @tweet4blood on Twitter stands-out as an exception. It is functional and practical.

How have I used it?
- As a donor, on three separate occasions I have called a mobile number that was RT’d by @tweet4blood
- On all three occasions I was late, despite calling within a few minutes of receiving the tweet!!
- In other words, the person who answered, said the equivalent of “I appreciate the call. We are covered. We have been flooded with calls from donors.”

I rest my case!
- @anand_bala”

I know it’s not a popular site but I think even if it has helped at least one on this planet earth. It’s successful. What do you think?

As I had written earlier, myself and @vsr are working on version 2 of Tweet4Blood . Here are some screens which VSR recently created. Home page has more information now. It has lot of white (yellow?) space which I like. As you can see it has very prominent twitter login button for donors to login. You don’t have to login to request as before.

The major change to the app will be alert customization for donors. Now you can login using your twitter account (Yeah. oAuth. No password sharing) and set your alerts. You can get the alerts for the blood requests in your city by mail, DM and IM (is coming not in screen shot). i.e when somebody requests your blood group, in your city, tweet4blood will send you an IM/DM/email depending on your settings.

Blood requesting is same as before, though it will include some suggestions from Umesh aka @ooomz like more user friendly forms. Like I have written earlier, you dont have to login to request.

Let us know what your thoughts about this new design. Actually you can suggest features too.

Question: Should we have an option to automatically post to FaceBook? may be perhaps using an app.

Tweet4Blood is covered on SkyNews UK today. Thanks to @RuthBarnett for such a wonderful coverage. I hope this coverage will make more and more people to follow @tweet4blood and donate blood.
“He set it up after a friend’s father asked for blood before he had a heart operation.”
Friends operation I was talking about in the article is Sandeep MKs article. I got inspired that day and I coded the application. Few days later VSR (I owe you lots of coffees man) redesigned the site and made that awesome logo.
“Since people tweet with blood type, location and phone number, it becomes easy for me to get in touch with the patient and do my best”
Also thanks to friend and fellow twitterist Sharadaprasad for sharing his experience. I feel very happy and satisfied when I get to know somebody made use of Tweet4Blood.

Thanks all.

BTW myself and VSR are already working on v2.0. Wait for more announcements.
Update: July 28
Some more good news. Today we got covered on Bangalore Mirror. Thanks to everybody at @bangaloremirror for spreading the cause.

OK. I was getting bored on Saturday and a friend of mine’s father went through heart surgery on last Thursday. Both events inspired me to code tweet4blood

So here it is

tweet4blood is at http://tweet4blood.com

From where you can tweet your blood requirement with out logging in. It tweets it to @tweet4blood. If you are a blood donor I request you to follow @tweet4blood and of course RT.

Thanks to VSR for the logo and design input. I owe you a coffee/beer dude.

Suggestion are welcome.