SupportTharoor.org was cre­ated in the wake of Shashi Tha­roor’s seem­ingly unjust res­ig­na­tion as Min­is­ter fol­low­ing the widely-reported Indian Pre­mier League con­tro­versy. At the wee hours of April 17 2010 the idea was born. In less than thirty-six hours, I worked with sup­port­ers and old friends of Dr Tha­roor to plan, design, build and launch a site which col­lected pledges and com­ments by peo­ple who wished to reach out to him. The site quickly turned into a roar­ing suc­cess on Twit­ter and Face­book. The num­ber of pledges quickly crossed a thou­sand in just seven hours. We achieved forty thou­sand unique vis­its one day even with the site down half the time due to the unex­pected traf­fic, before mov­ing to the cloud. Word got to major media out­lets and the site was men­tioned in a CNN TV news broadcast.

Land­ing page

The mes­sage on the land­ing page was clear and force­ful. Users knew instantly what to do. The only prob­lem with the site was that it could not keep up with the traf­fic brought upon by the power of word of mouth and exten­sive media coverage.

Some inter­est­ing pledges that were collected:

When Shashi Tha­roor became India’s Exter­nal Affairs Min­is­ter, I saw new hope for the future of the sub-continent. What Gandhi the saint could not pre­vent, I believed now Tha­roor could amend. Tauhidur Rashid from Nairobi, Dhaka, Chennai

You are the refresh­ing change we were look­ing for in Indian pol­i­tics. My votes are always for peo­ple like you. You should be back, and I am sure you will be. Sujan from Dubai

And this one from a girl which is kind of funny:

You were great ear­lier when you worked hard and that did all the talk­ing. Now you have become a smooth talk­ing, hair toss­ing, woman chas­ing politi­cian and it just dont feel right. Please go back to the per­son you were when you were a role model for stu­dents and other girls like me. Just don’t like the new you. Nadiya from Bahrain

We also received con­tri­bu­tions from the com­mu­nity such as this graph­i­cal web ban­ner made by an ardent supporter.

Trib­ute

Zero to hero in five days.

Stats

As a friend and sup­porter of Dr Tha­roor, I am proud to have been part of this project. Although he has not been rein­stated as Min­is­ter, he is still kick­ing ass in Indian pol­i­tics and chang­ing people’s lives in sig­nif­i­cant ways.