As I’ve been preparing my presentation for PodCamp Seattle regarding how social media can be used to help create social good, I decided to use social media to reach out and find some great examples.
First, I posted a request through Twitter (follow me) and received a couple of good ideas. Then I realized it might make sense to reach out two people that care and have a lot more Twitter followers than me: Guy Kawasaki (follow Guy) and Chris Brogan (follow Chris).
They were kind enough to post a request for ideas to thousands of their followers, and voila! I received a boat load of responses immediately—good stuff I’ll be able to use to make my presentation better.
I also made some new Twitter friends along the way, like Tan Siok Siok, an award-winning filmmaker and educator (follow Siok Siok).
Check out the trailer for her new documentary regarding the Beijing Olympics, Boomtown Beijing.
On her blog, I discovered the following video:
I was struck by its creative execution and simplicity—and surprised to learn it was created by a student. It has been viewed 1.2 million times in four months. Fascinating, and worth your time.
When I decided to look for examples for my speech using social media, I expected to get what I was looking for and move on. But I got more than that—I received goodwill, gained inspiration and made some new friends along the way.
And that, unto itself, is social good gained from social media.
Have you seen social media used to create social good?
Comment below to share.
Vancity’s “ChangeEverything.com” is my favorite (or favourite, as they are Canadian) example of social media used to create social good.
Check out Epic Change (http://www.epicchange.org) and the way they have used YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/group/storiesmatter), blogging (http://www.epicchange.org/blog), and Twitter (http://twitter.com/staceymonk). I interviewed Epic Change’s CEO, Stacey Monk, about social media on my podcast (http://marketing4change.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/stacey-monk-of-epic-change-and-social-media-marketing/). Hope this helps.
Seesmic users posted video messages on seesmic to ask to save Ingrid Betancourt who is a hostage of the Farc in Colombia for 6 years … Here is the link of the page I designed to re-present all the posts together. http://www.tiil.us/seesmic/ingrid/
We’ve used social media to drive “Geeks Doing Good”, an organization we hope to take national, encouraging local tech people to network while doing something good for their community.
We normally organize one day each month where we have everyone come together for a morning or afternoon to volunteer for a local charity… past highlights have included the San Francisco Food Bank, the St. Vincent de Paul Center, Discarded to Divine (a charity fashion show), and next up is the AIDS Walk come July 20.
Social Media has allowed us to invite, manage, and inform our members (200+) about upcoming events and ways to make a difference in their community.
Twitter itself is a social web technology which has been applied very directly for good – for example, by egyptian human rights activists.
I’ve blogged about loads of other good examples of social web for social impact.