This week, creator of Firefox, Mozilla, announced a holiday charity campaign called the “Mozilla Firefox Challenge” in which it has seeded 12 celebrity backed charities with $5,000. The organization that ends up with the most donations by January 11, 2012 will get an additional $25,000 donation from Mozilla.

That’s a total of $85,000 Mozilla will donate to charities over the holidays.

This is what Mozilla had to say about the challenge, which is taking place on the popular charity platform Crowdrise:

Mozilla builds products, like Firefox, that put users in control of their online experience and shape the future of the Web — not for profit, but for good. As part of our commitment to making a difference, this holiday season we’re hoping to get everyone in on the spirit of doing good. So, just like we do with Firefox, let’s turn individual action into global impact together.

Mozilla certainly nabbed a well-known group of celebrities. Here are the twelve of them and their organizations who get $5,000 each to start and could win the $25,000 prize if they raise the most money on their own:

• Paul Rudd, The Rolling Dog Farm
• Will Ferrell, Cancer for College
• David Blaine, Charity: Water
• Barbra Streisand, Cedars-Sinai Women’s Heart Center
• Jason Bateman, City Year
• Christy Turlington Burns, Every Mother Counts
• Sophia Bush, F Cancer
• Seth Rogen, The Alzheimer’s Association
• Sean Penn, The J/P Haitian Relief Organization
• Edward Norton, The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust
• Jonah Hill, Nothing But Nets
• Zooey Deschanel, The Innocence Project

Donating to a cause that you care about is at the crux of this campaign, but the celebrities have some treats in store for lucky folks who are of the giving persuasion. For example, you could win a signed cowbell from Will Ferrell, a voicemail from Paul Rudd, or a signed copy of the “Elf” DVD from Zooey Deschanel. That’s pretty neat.

Go support your favorite causes and celebrities, and win some cool stuff in the process.

➤ Mozilla Firefox Challenge

When Twitter usage appeared to have plateaued, leaving mainstream audiences wondering why they should tell the world what they’re eating for lunch in 140 characters, along came the celebrity cavalry.

As soon as rich and famous stars like Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber, and Lady Gaga took to the micro-sharing platform, renewed interest in Twitter brought the platform back to life. No longer was the service just for talking about your cat, now you could get celebrity news and gossip directly from the source.

It seems like daily deal sites are taking a similar approach. I’m sure you can imagine that since Groupon has taken off, many entrepeneurs are taking a stab at putting together sites that focus on a limited supply of products for sale in a limited amount of time. It’s working, too.

But something is starting to become a trend in the pitches that we see at The Next Web. Celebrity involvement. It’s very reminiscent of what has become popular in both the web and the app world. Build a service, get a celebrity endorser, and expect immediate success.

One site, OpenSky, is taking full advantage of the world’s interest in what celebrities think.

Remember when selling things on TV meant the end of an actors career? Me too.

If Martha Stewart jumped off of a bridge, would you?

Celebrity endorsements are nothing new, we’ve seen famous people hawking things on TV for decades. Commercials are expensive though, so clearly entrepreneurs are seeing the web as a wild west for getting mainstream attention. No longer do you have to pay millions for an ad spot during primetime TV, just get a celebrity to say your service rocks, and it’s off to the races. Or is it?

OpenSky is hoping that the items on its site will be that much harder to turn down because famous chefs like Bobby Flay suggests them. Same items as most sites, but the celebs are the difference.

Here’s Martha Stewart inviting you to come buy stuff, because she says so:

If you took away her face and name, you’d have every other “social commerce” site on the web. Right now we’re seeing a celebrity land grab of epic proportions in the e-commerce space. But will it work?

Same stuff, different day

These items aren’t new, the websites are nothing new, the ability to share things with your friends is nothing new. What’s new is the style and presentation on these daily deal sites. Groupon leverages your social graph to make its sales, and sites like OpenSky are relying on known celebrities and brands to help you push the purchase button.

Arguably, celebrities helped save Twitter, and celebrities are helping obscure apps reach the mainstream. We’re fascinated with what celebrities have to say, but at what point will we realize that these celebs aren’t all that involved, and what we’re seeing is a tried and true marketing effort repackaged for the digital age.

Try to remember that these celebrities didn’t make the pages themselves, probably have never used the sites themselves, and have a team of “social media gurus” guiding them on how to put their name on anything that can make a few dollars.

All of these daily deals sites are fighting over the same items. A lot of them display the same items as the others do. These companies have had to take a hard look at how they present the items, since you can get them everywhere already. Does Britney Spears know anything about perfumes? Probably not, but she sells quite a bit of it by just putting her name on it.

I fear that the influx of celebrities in the daily deals space shows that we’ve reached the end of creative line for these types of businesses. If celebrities are all that’s left to compete in the space, we’ll run out of them too.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach, it just feels hollow to me. It also lacks long-term vision.

Everyone in the social commerce should take a look at what sneakpeeq is doing by making shopping on the web a fun and a truly social experience. Martha Stewart can suggest all of the kitchen knives she wants, but it’s the same crap I’ve seen on every other site, including Amazon. At least the Olsen twins got involved in something that pushes the technical and online sales envelope.

When you’re muddling through your Twitter activity stream and Facebook Newsfeed, you’ll see more information then you’ll ever actually interact with. Picking and choosing what to read, and what to pass on can be a bit difficult.

The company Twosift wants to help you sift through the wreckage that can be the Internet, and leverages known leaders in different verticals to bring you the news and information you should pay attention to first.

While I rely on my friends to bubble up awesome content, if you’re interested in getting to the heart of the matter on what’s hot in technology, business, or politics, the Twosift approach isn’t a bad one.

The free iPad only app is gorgeous, and has an interface that anyone can figure out.

Getting the news from the people who make it

Instead of waiting for an article from David Pogue, or a tweet from Tim Ferris, why not use Twosift to see what they’re up to and talking about in real-time? That’s what Twosift wants you to do, but is that the way people really want to find important things?

We follow notable celebrities and thought leaders on Twitter, so it would make sense to bring in the best of the best to one place.

When you open the app, you’re presented with the default “celebrities” that are handpicked by Twosift.

Of course, if you aren’t interested in what the defaults have to say, you can add another one of the chosen ones, broken up by Business, Health and Literature, Media, Politics, and Technology. There are currently 76 people to choose from to place on your Twosift main page.

The unfortunate part about Twosift is that you can’t customize the app by adding a new person or feed like you can with Flipboard. This will most certainly cause ego driven “leaders” to clamber for their own addition to the app.

What’s Arrington up to these days?

Once you tap into a person’s feed on Twosift, the latest tweets, public Facebook posts, and articles that they’ve linked to and written are shown in little boxes. If you tap on something, the piece of media is opened within the app. This is helpful, as I dislike being kicked to the Safari browser by an app. The app updates itself in real-time, and actually is a handy way to keep up on news as driven by actual newsmakers, rather than friends in different parts of the world with interests that might not be shared by you.

Missing from the Twosift app oddly, are actual celebrities. While I feel like Michael Arrington and Bill Gates are brilliant people, with amazing things to say, the app seems to focus on the geeky set appreciate the new way of consuming news. I’m assuming that Twosift is anointing these people as “Internet Celebrities”.

An actual entertainment section featuring celebrities who create and share a lot of media would be welcomed. For example, Wil Wheaton generates a ton of great content, and I would gladly follow all of his musings in the Twosift app.

The company says that it’s “just getting started”, so perhaps they will add some more interesting Internet celebrities to follow on the app. The change in distribution methods is an interesting one, as social media is relying on prominent individuals to spread information more and more, rather than publications. While publications generate most of the content, these folks most certainly help propagate it to the masses.

Do you prefer to follow publications, or would you rather get your news blessed from people who know their stuff? Tell us in the comments.

➤ Twosift