Donation Resurrects the Digital Dead

A half-million dollar-donation has brought celebrity participants in a high-profile AIDS charity stunt back from the digital dead.

After less than a week of self-imposed digital silence, Keep a Child Alive has raised $1 million for its cause and effectively restored the voices of such high-volume tweeters as Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian.

Keep a Child Alive, the charitable organization cofounded by Alicia Keys responsible for the widely publicized "digital death" campaign, garnered intense media attention for ads depicting celebrities including Usher, Justin Timberlake, Elijah Wood, and Janelle Monae in coffins, appearing to be dead. The initiative began December 1, World AIDS Day. Participants pledged to sacrifice their "digital lives" -- to abstain from Twitter and Facebook, effectively eliminating their digital presence -- in hopes of saving millions of real lives.

The contributions came in more slowly than some projected, but six days later, a $500,000 donation from pharmaceutical entrepreneur Stewart Rahr brought the campaign to its goal of $1 million and digitally resurrected the participating stars.