Signatures are currency for Amnesty International. They are the most powerful weapon Amnesty has to help bring about change.

And while millions of people show their support for social causes everyday, few are hardcore activists, or even know where to go to show support. The opportunity was to combine the power of Social Media with the power of signatures…

Twitter + Signature = Twignature.

To support a cause you simply retweet a message from @Amnesty and your Twitter handle is automatically converted into a digital signature on an online petition.

In March 2013, Amnesty needed to lobby Barack Obama to sign the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. Twignature was used to capture support for this cause. With one click, Twitter users could sign the petition AND spread the word.

The treaty was approved and Amnesty gained a powerful new tool in their ongoing fight for human rights.

Signatures are currency for Amnesty International. They are the most powerful weapon the organization has to bring about change. But signatures are hard to get. We found a way to give a voice to the ‘silent majority’ who support Amnesty but are not necessarily hard core activists. Twignature combines the power of Social Media with the power of signatures. Twignature is the first and currently the only aggregation of Twitter hash-tags representing users’ ‘handles’ aligned behind a common cause in the form of a real-time petition. Twignature elevates the act of re-tweeting into a form of quantifiable altruism.

- “We couldn’t be more thrilled with the results” said Jennifer Gmerek, Online Community Manager, Amnesty USA.

- Hashtags #Twignature and #MakeObamaSign trended on Twitter at launch date 12th March.

- Almost 6,000 Twignatures were captured, exceeding the target by 20%. This resulted in a petition almost 200 feet long.

- A single tweet captured over 800 Twignatures.

- The Twignature campaign was supported by key human rights activists globally with Twignatures created in over 50 countries.

- @Amnesty gained 20,000 new Twitter followers during the campaign period.

- And… Obama signed. The Arms Treaty was approved by a majority of 154-3, with the US voting ‘YES’.