You can always rely on the kindness of strangers

When I first started my fundraising for the London Marathon I thought hard about who I could target for some sponsorship - friends, family, work people, and...well that's it. Ah, but of course, this is the 21st century - I had the entire internet out there to use.

Since those heady day of September 2008 when the Credit Crunch was a funny "and finally" story in the news, I have managed to raise £1,100 for the NSPCC. A charity which, in this six month period, has been proven to be, sadly, still vital in today's society.

Of this £1,100 a total of £55 has come due to online connections: A fiver from @jojo_wood via Twitter, £10 from @danieltwigg through Twitter/ work connections, £20 from the owner of blog site Five-Centers (a blog worth adding to your Netvibes or, if you insist on helping out small struggling companies, Google Reader) and, through some networking on Twitter, £20 by 'offering' to be interviewed for the JustGiving website.

As Marge and the cast sing in The Simpson's episode A Streetcar Named Marge...a stranger's just a friend you haven't metttttttttttttt.' Well you get the picture.

But it proves the internet, far from aiding and abetting the 'death of conversation' or cutting people off as the naysayers would claim, actually brings people together, gets them talking, engaging and helping one another, far more than ever before.