Twitter and other social media sites are often perceived as the ultimate navel-gazing tools. Seemingly a narcissist’s dream, many think that Facebook status updates and the 140-character Twitter messages (known as “tweets”) are really just boring play-by-plays of daily life—I had granola for breakfast! I’m stuck in traffic!

But Laurie Brosius, 31, isn’t buying it. Brosius, a business analyst in Dallas, used Twitter to raise $6,000 for a walk for breast cancer research in 2008. “Fifty percent of that came from online strangers,” she says. She was able to reach those people in part because her Twitter followers re-tweeted her messages.

In 2004, Brosius started blogging about her upcoming wedding. But after she married, she felt a key person was missing from the happy picture—her husband’s mother, who had died of breast cancer at age 48 when her husband was 20 years old. “I felt like I missed out on having her in my life,” says Brosius. “I felt cheated.”

She wanted to raise money for breast cancer research, so she participated in a three-day walk and fund-raiser, but felt she could do more. She had used Twitter to raise a small sum for that first walk, but for the second walk she relied mainly on tweets to direct people to the donation website.

(Anyone can see breast cancer–related tweets by typing #breastcancer into Twitter’s search field.)

Brosius still blogs and says that breast cancer organizations’ websites are great places to donate. However, Brosius says, they only reach a specific crowd—those already interested in the topic.

“[Social media sites] are reaching people who might not be specifically looking for that kind of information,” she explains. “They’re reaching everyone.”

Is brevity the key to charity?
In a busy world, Twitter posts are succinct and to the point, and that’s one of the main reasons they’re so successful in charity promotion, says Adam Hirsch, the chief operations officer of Mashable.com, a social media blog. Navigating websites can be time-consuming, notes Hirsch. Twitter, however, states a user’s case in no more than 140 characters. “It’s a message you know people will read because, face it, it’s only 140 characters,” he says.

With Twitter, users can interact one-on-one, but they can also broadcast a message to many followers. Even if an individual doesn’t have a lot of followers (say, just family and friends), those people can re-tweet that message in outgoing concentric circles of social contacts—potentially reaching thousands.

“With social media, you have the ability to spread a message with like-minded individuals pretty rapidly and virally to a targeted audience that is receptive to this message,” Hirsch explains.

Mashable.com is leveraging its social media savvy through its Summer of Social Good, which is an online charitable campaign. The site is raising money for four big charities: the Humane Society (you can search for @HumaneSociety on Twitter): LiveStrong, the Lance Armstrong Foundation (@LiveSTRONG); OxfamAmerica, which seeks to end poverty (@OxfamAmerica); and the World Wildlife Fund (@WWF_Climate).

The idea got started last year when Mashable founder Pete Cashmore tweeted on his birthday, asking followers to donate to Charity: Water in lieu of birthday gifts. He raised $10,000 in a little over a day.

“I thought, ‘This is definitely an interesting way to use social media,’” says Hirsch. “It’s time to give back and to really try to make a big difference.” Mashable’s Social Media for Social Good campaign ends on August 28.

Peg Mulligan, 40, is a content developer in Beverly, Mass., who raises awareness of breast cancer via Twitter, by tweeting (or re-tweeting) fundraising initiatives, blog posts, and other relevant links. Although she has breast cancer in her family and cares about the topic, she says she doesn’t necessarily want to think about it all the time. That’s one reason people may not seek out traditional breast cancer donation channels, she says.

Unlike such message boards and topic-specific websites, Mulligan says, Twitter is a “gentler way of reaching people” because it indirectly grabs users’ attention in a stream of other topics.

Facebook vs. Twitter
Mashable’s Hirsch prefers Twitter to Facebook for social causes because anyone can choose to follow someone on Twitter, which leads to broader, looser networks of people. “Facebook is inherently different because it’s more built around friends,” he says.

However, some people are using Facebook to communicate their personal messages to their immediate social circle—though it’s not always smooth sailing.

Earlier this year, a breast cancer survivor named Sharon Adams posted pictures of her ropy red mastectomy scars on Facebook. She hoped to shock friends in her suburban England network into checking their own breasts for cancer. “I wanted to take something positive out of a bad situation,” says the 45-year-old, who posed for the shots just six days after having surgery.

Instead, Facebook management took down the photos in a routine purge of “sexual” images. The result? An avalanche of media attention and a 900-member protest that quickly grew to 3,000, even as the company rapidly apologized and backpedaled. Facebook said they had “made a mistake” and Adams put the images back up.

Adams says that despite the setback, she realized her goal—extra online chitchat about the issue and maybe more checked breasts. In her own circle alone, several friends and a niece made the extra effort. “It turned out to be a good thing in a way,” she says. “This amount of publicity would never have arisen if they had not [removed the photographs].”

The largest breast cancer–related group on Facebook is LookPink, a search engine that aims to provide free mammograms for women. It has 850,000 members and acts as a fund-raising and awareness hub with round-the-clock discussion—especially during October, breast cancer awareness month. It’s one of several Facebook gateways to the corresponding LookPink website.

But there are hundreds of breast cancer groups on Facebook, many no bigger than the page of eight women from the Persian Gulf city of Doha, Qatar.

The Facebook page that hosts Sharon Adams’s protest group has a link to her own efforts to raise cash for breast cancer research in the U.K., for instance, and a petition to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to get gene tests covered by insurance.

“There is a huge presence of women who have battled or are battling breast cancer who are connecting online,” says Alison Gordon, the vice president of strategy, marketing, and communications for Rethink Breast Cancer, a Canadian nonprofit that encourages breast self-exams.

“Social media offers an incredible forum for women to expand their online communities from around the world and share their stories,” she says.

Part of Brosius’s story—and another reason she started using Twitter to raise funds—is her concern for her husband’s sister and her sister-in-law’s three daughters. “I wanted to do all I could to find a cure before they grow up,” she says.

THURSDAY, Sept. 17, 2009 (Health.com) — Women at high risk of breast cancer can often lower that risk by taking medication, including drugs like tamoxifen or the osteoporosis drug raloxifene (Evista).

Now, a new analysis suggests that women and their doctors need to weigh the dangers of the drugs’ side effects—which can include blood clots, cataracts, and cancer of the uterine lining—against the benefits of breast cancer prevention.

The analysis, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, was published in the September 15 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

However, the bigger problem may be that not enough women who are candidates for the drugs are actually taking them. About 2% of U.S. women are at high risk for breast cancer, but many don’t take tamoxifen or raloxifene, according to Christy Russell, MD, an American Cancer Society spokesperson who chairs the organization’s breast cancer advisory committee.

“That’s extremely unfortunate, because we have 200,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer every year and we could potentially reduce that number by half using drugs that are already approved by the [Food and Drug Administration] for this specific purpose,” she says. Dr. Russell says the drugs are underused due to a lack of education among both patients and physicians as to their safety and effectiveness.

“As a culture, it’s a very hard sell to convince us to take drugs for a disease we don’t already have,” she adds.

In the new review, Heidi Nelson, MD, of the Oregon Health & Science University, and her colleagues looked at eight clinical trials of three drugs—tamoxifen, raloxifene, and tibolone. The trials were all conducted in women at high risk of breast cancer who had not been diagnosed with the disease.

Tamoxifen and raloxifene are both selective estrogen-receptor modulators (SERMs), a class of drug that cuts the risk of invasive breast cancer in at-risk women. Both drugs are FDA-approved for that purpose. Tibolone works in a different way and is not approved for use in the United States. (It is approved for menopausal symptoms in 90 countries, and for osteoporosis in 45 countries.)

The researchers found that the three medications reduce invasive breast cancer by 30% to 68%, depending on the drug. Tamoxifen and raloxifene were about the same in terms of reducing the risk of estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer, which makes up about 60% of breast cancers.

However, the two drugs also increase the risk of blood clots, one of the most serious complications. (Clots can cause heart attacks and strokes).

Patients who took tamoxifen had a higher risk of cataracts and a greater chance of blood clots compared to those who took raloxifene. Women who took tamoxifen also had twice the risk of cancer of the endometrium, or uterine lining, as women who didn’t take the drugs. Although doctors can monitor a woman for the early signs of endometrial cancer, she may need a hysterectomy to treat it.

Both tamoxifen and raloxifene cause hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms, according to the review. Tibolone was associated with a greater risk of stroke than other drugs, but the study authors say they need more data to truly determine its safety and effectiveness.

Dr. Russell recommends that women who are at high risk for breast cancer speak with their doctors and weigh the risks and benefits of drug therapy. High-risk women who have not yet entered menopause should consider tamoxifen; postmenopausal women should choose raloxifene due to its lower risk of certain side effects, she says.

The good news is that taking a SERM for about five years lowers a woman’s risk even after she stops taking it. (Still, it doesn’t guarantee that she won’t get breast cancer.) The drugs prevent 7 to 10 cases of invasive breast cancer per 1,000 women per year of the drug’s use.

So why aren’t more women taking them? Dr. Russell says that explaining the risks and benefits of the drugs—and managing and monitoring possible side effects—can take time, a rare commodity for most doctors.

What’s more, prevention of most conditions, whether breast cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, often takes a backseat to testing and treatment. “Physicians just are not rewarded for these types of preventive approaches,” Dr. Russell says.

Women are considered to be at high risk for breast cancer based on several factors, including having close relatives with breast cancer (a mother, daughter, or sister) and being diagnosed with a precancerous breast condition.

In general, women can lower their risk of breast cancer by maintaining a healthy body weight, exercising regularly, and limiting alcohol consumption, according to the American Cancer Society. Although regular mammograms don’t prevent breast cancer, they can lead to earlier detection and more successful treatment.