Facebook puzzle gives charity unexpected boost

Washington : The world awoke Friday to discover that Davi's bra is black. Janet's is blue with bows. The colours were, at first at least, somewhat mystifyingly posted on thousands upon thousands of Facebook pages as their status updates, without any context.

By midday, the colour craze had gone viral on the internet and around the globe, as had the word that the colours were really bra colours. Almost immediately, cyber-arguments erupted about what it all meant. Was this an attempt to raise breast cancer awareness? Or was it all just another Facebook "send your friend a snowball" or "take your celebrity boyfriend quiz" silly game? A meme?

Whatever it is, its impact was immediate and dramatic: As bra colours went flying around the net, something strange happened at the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. After two years of intensive efforts to boost its profile, within two hours on Friday morning, their fan base on Facebook exploded from 135 to 700.

As far as anyone can tell so far, the colour craze started, in the US at least, a few days ago with a chain letter e-mail on Facebook that went viral. The mystery remains: whose idea was this?

— Washington Post News Service