Drew Carey, host of The Price is Right, is willing to pay big bucks for a Twitter handle (Courtesy AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, FILE)

Drew Olanoff appears to be a remarkable person to me. He’s very good at using social networking to move people to action. He’s also a cancer patient. He created a meme on Twitter: #BlameDrewsCancer. He hopes that once he beats the disease he’ll be able to get sponsors to donate a dollar for every person who decides to use Twitter to blame something on his cancer. He’s going to donate the money to Livestrong, the cancer foundation that Lance Armstrong founded.

How does it work? Just start blaming Drew’s cancer for your misfortunes. Missed the bus? Twitter about it and use the hashtag of #BlameDrewsCancer. Order a cheeseburger with no onions only to find out you have a regular burger with extra onions? Unleash a 140-character tirade and #BlameDrewsCancer. Each message goes to the Blame Drew’s Cancer Web site. When Olanoff recovers from cancer, he’ll tally up all the messages.

Olanoff hasn’t stopped there though. He came up with another idea: auctioning off his Twitter handle. Olanoff scored the handle of @Drew. You had to either jump on Twitter very early or be incredibly lucky to land a Twitter handle that’s just a first name. That’s why you see so many longer names out there like, I don’t know, @JonStrickland. Those short Twitter handles are a rare commodity.

Olanoff announced that he was going to auction his Twitter handle off and donate the money to Livestrong. He asked for an opening bid of $10,000, hoping that a celebrity or wealthy person would step up. He didn’t have to wait long. Drew Carey (@DrewFromTV on Twitter), improvisational comedian and host of The Price is Right, stepped forward with a bid of $25,000. Shortly after, he decided to up the ante: if he gets 100,000 followers by November 9th (the day the auction ends), he’ll increase his bid to $100,000.

Yesterday, Drew Carey, in a seemingly spontaneous decision, upped the ante a second time. In an interview with CBS reporter Shira Lazar, Carey said that if he has 1,000,000 followers on Twitter before midnight, December 31, 2009 (Pacific time), he’ll donate $1,000,000 to Livestrong. He also said that if he doesn’t reach 1,000,000 followers, he’ll donate a dollar for every follower he does have. If he only hits 500,000 followers, he’ll still donate half a million dollars to Livestrong.

Some might call this a publicity stunt or a blatant plea for more followers. Others may be more, pardon the word, charitable. Personally, I think Carey’s offer is made in sincerity. I began following him shortly after his first bid and have been impressed with his tweets since then (even the ones about the Cleveland Browns). And in the end, it raises awareness about cancer and the Livestrong foundation. I’m following @DrewFromTV. Are you?

Learn more about Twitter, social networking and even cancer at HowStuffWorks.com:

How Twitter Works
How Online Social Networks Work
How Cancer Works