First 24-hour RSPCA tweet-a-thon

02.08.11

We will be tweeting animal emergencies over 24 hours for the first time between 10am on Wednesday 3 and 10am on Thursday, 4 August as part of our 24/7 appeal.

To find out more about the appeal visit: www.rspca.org.uk/247

Twitter fans who follow RSPCA_Frontline at: twitter.com/RSPCA_Frontline will be able to view the wide range of calls for help the RSPCA receives.

Inspector Tony Woodley, communications and liaison officer for the RSPCA inspectorate, set up the RSPCA_Frontline Twitter feed as he wanted to publicise the work of our 292 inspectors, 80 animal welfare officers and 52 animal collection officers.

24-hour tweet-a-thon

Tony has tweeted over the course of eight hours before, but from 10am on Wednesday he will spend 24 hours at our national control centre in South Yorkshire, tweeting incidents as they happen.

This time, though, he won’t be alone – Richard Harding, chief superintendent, and James Self, digital project manager, will both be there to help convert the huge number of incidents into tweets and to keep Tony company throughout Wednesday night!

On average someone in England and Wales calls our cruelty line on 0300 1234 999 every 30 seconds.

We received more than 1.25 million phone calls last year and respond to around 1,000 incidents a day. During the last eight-hour tweeting event on 5 May, we tasked out 2,160 incidents to our inspectors and officers.

Tony said:

I tweet several times on most days and have managed to tweet incidents for eight hours before, but this will be the first time we’ve done something like this over 24 hours. I’m really excited about the project and I hope the great feedback from our supporters will help get us through the night.

Feedback on Twitter has been excellent and people are interested to know about the RSPCA’s frontline work, although they are understandably shocked by the extent of the cruelty and neglect we deal with. I just think it’s so important to let people know what we do and how hard our frontline officers work.

We also hope that the tweet-a-thon will attract more help for the RSPCA’s unique animal welfare service which depends entirely on the support of the public to continue.

Incidents that have been published on Twitter include:

• A CAT TRAPPED IN A BASEMENT FOR FOUR DAYS, OWNER UNKNOWN
   
• 3 FOX CUBS TRAPPED DOWN A 6 FOOT WELL
   
• OWNER USED HANDS AND FEET TO BEAT DOG
   
• SNAKE IN BACK GARDEN

Calls to our cruelty line are treated in confidence. Details of incidents tweeted are edited so no one is identified and will not include a location.

To report animal suffering or cruelty to the RSPCA, please call 0300 1234 999.
Please don’t send a message via Twitter.

Find out more

• To find out more about the RSPCA 24-hour tweet-a-thon please visit: twitter.com/RSPCA_Frontline

 

How you can help

The RSPCA only exists because of public donations - it is thanks to the generosity of our supporters that we are able to continue to provide this vital service.

• To find out how you can help, visit our appeal page: www.rspca.org.uk/247