Everybody knows that Facebook is useful not just for interacting with friends but also for promoting brands, events and causes.

If you are an avid Facebook user and have quite a few female friends in your network, you would have notice last week a phenomenon where the status updates of females consisted merely of colours.

That’s right: Black, white, pink, red, blue and so on. What could this mean? For sure, many males were dumbfounded because they weren’t in on the secret. But the women knew. It was a viral campaign to promote awareness of breast cancer.

The interesting thing about this campaign is not how fast it’s spread – online viral campaigns often spread fast – but that nobody seems to know who started it.

“What is particularly unique about this grass-roots campaign is that it seems to have been started by a user or group of users, as opposed to an official entity, and spread virally throughout Facebook,” Facebook spokesperson Malorie Lucich said. “It's an ideal example of how an individual voice can be magnified to create awareness for a good cause and ignite action among millions by using a site like Facebook.”

Criticism of this campaign soon emerged with some complaining that simply posting a colour achieves practically nothing. Forbes.com quotes Twitterer BrandyandIce as saying, “Shows how U can spread an idea so fast & wide, but really doesn't achieve much.”

Karissa Nicole however Twittered that she saw some solid value in the campaign: “yes I update mine on FB. Reminds me to have gratitude that I am not with that disease and to have compassion for those w it.”

And some were undecided whether it was a good idea or not. The Houston Chronicle quoted a blogger as saying “I wrote 'None - in fact, I don't even OWN one’.”

The campaign has even generated some satire. “Now, however, the meme appears to be shifting to men. In what can only be described as a horrible, mortifying turn of events, members of the male species are slowly starting to use Facebook to divulge details about what lurks beneath their chinos,” wrote humour site, eSarcasm.

What do you think? Is the campaign a worthy one or a useless one? Take this poll by NPR to contribute your views.