How Bloggers Can Help During Times of Tragedy

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On April 25, tragedy struck Nepal as a 7.8-magnitude earthquake destroyed residences and buildings (including the UNESCO Word Heritage sites) in Kathmandu and took the lives of around 5,000 civilians (and counting). The earthquake is the most devastating natural calamity that hit Nepal since the Nepal-Bihar earthquake in 1934.

Relief efforts from all over the world are underway but frustration is boiling in some parts of Nepal who have yet to receive the assistance they badly need.

If you wish to help your Nepali brothers and sisters, below are links to online media outlets pointing to trustworthy organizations collecting donation or the victims of the earthquake:

Before sending out your donation, read this post at NPR first to understand how your donation is received and processed by these organizations.

While these are the steps that you can take in order to lend a helping hand to those in need, the question now remain: what I can do to help as a blogger?

If you are an authoritative blogger with a sizable readership and clout to influence your audience, you can use these to make an effort and increase the assistance to the victims of the earthquakes. Here’s what you can do:

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Michael Jackson Has Most Fans on Facebook

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The tragic death of Michael Jackson is still hot on the web. The upcoming memorial service aside, another proof of the artist’s former greatness is him surpassing everyone on Facebook, clocking in at over 6.8 million fans as I’m writing this. And it just doesn’t stop, new fans are added every second. It’s almost scary.

Meanwhile CNN is planning to integrating people’s MJ memories from Facebook with their upcoming live coverage of the memorial. Assuming you’re one of the millions not holding a ticket to the Staples Center, Mashable tells you where you can watch the memorial online. There is no way anyone in the social web will miss this, wether they like it or not.

Digg Dialogg Goes Live, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the First Victim

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Digg is rolling out their Digg Dialogg service, which basically is a Q&A with select people, where the questions are submitted by the Digg users, and then dugg up or down, with the winning ones behind actually asked. It is Digg for questions to a specific person, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the moment. Kevin Rose explains:

The concept is simple – we identify a featured guest that you will be able to submit questions to (text or video) which the Digg community Diggs up or down. We’ll pose the top questions to the guest during a live interview. Featured guests will represent thought leaders and tastemakers across diverse topics including technology luminaries, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, musicians and filmmakers.

The Digg Dialogg is part of Digg’s coverage of the US presidential election, and a partnership with CNN’s iReport. It is likely that Digg Dialogg will stick around after the election is over as well.