Tweeting to Save a Life

Photojojo and Jelly cofounder Amit Gupta has been diagnosed with acute leukemia.

Image: tumblr.amitgupta.com

If you’re following a bunch of Silicon Valley-startup-types on Twitter, you might have noticed the hashtag #IswabbedforAmit popping up recently.

What’s that all about? The Amit in question is 32-year-old Photojojo and Jelly cofounder Amit Gupta, who was diagnosed a little over two weeks ago with acute leukemia. And the swabbing is a reference to a campaign to find him the bone marrow donor that could save his life.

When Gupta’s tech friends and fans found out about his diagnosis, a Twitter campaign began to find a donor. The campaign has spread since then, reaching CNN, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg News.

Finding bone marrow donors is notoriously difficult, because the donor has to be a genetic match. Gupta’s search is not made easier by the fact that there’s a one in 20,000 chance of finding a match for someone of South Asian descent in the national registry.

Several friends and colleagues of Gupta, including entrepreneur Seth Godin, have offered money for the donor’s trouble, but had to revise their offers after the practice was found to be illegal.

If you’re of South Asian descent and you want to be swabbed or can help organize others to be swabbed, you can sign up here.

Get more business intelligence from Portfolio.com:

• Jobs Council Pitches Obama: President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness has presented a raft of ideas to float entrepreneurs. The president, meanwhile, continues to push his own jobs agenda.
• Groupon Keeps Mum on Totals: Did someone say quiet period? Well, Groupon seems to be taking that requirement very seriously these days by no longer publicizing the number of deals sold in an effort to keep armchair accountants from guessing at its revenues.
• NYC Protests Get Personal Against the Rich: Frustrated demonstrators descended on one of New York City's ritziest neighborhoods to denounce the widening gap between the rich and nonrich and support extending a tax surcharge against the state's wealthiest citizens.