Celebrities are Twitter superstars. Eight of the top ten most-followed users are celebs, accounting for tens of millions of followers.

And these famous faces are banding together to help solve some of the world’s problems, using their 140-character influence.

As CNN reports, Smokey Robinson (@Smokey_Robinson) has asked his famous pals to help him launch the “Smoke Alarm” Twitter campaign, described as the “social media-based emergency broadcast system for causes [to] sound the alarm when projects need attention”.

Smoke Alarm works sort of like those chain phone calls that parents used to do when school events were canceled: Robinson starts by tweeting something, it’s retweeted by a first wave of celebrities, who get it to millions of regular folk like us, and we continue passing it along.

And this chain reaction will be sparked by issues that matter most in the world, like famine, natural disasters and other problems we face.

Robinson explains that,

“In this digital age we have the tools to level the playing field for those in need, so I’m calling on my friends and fans to lend their voices to mine, so we can collectively give voice to those who have none.”

The plan is to tweet when something urgent arises, such as a desperate need for food in a developing country. Robinson will start the tweeting, and celebrities like James Franco (@JamesFrancoTV) and Eva Longoria (@EvaLongoria) – who have already signed on to Smoke Alarm – will continue passing along the message asking for donations or raising awareness.

With the celebrities already on board, this campaign will reach about 5 million people in just the first wave of celeb retweets. And if Robinson got Gaga and Bieber to sign up, they campaign could reach over 50 million people in a matter of seconds.

Smoke Alarm hasn’t officially launched yet, but expect to see more humanitarian tweets from your favorite celebrities in the near future.

(Viral marketing image via Shutterstock)