20 Ways Social Media Can Change the World That I Just Made Up
This week everyone’s been abuzz/ablog/aTwitter about the Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit, in which leading Thought Leaders (I couldn’t make it, was too busy with ABH.biz launch stuff) did digital lounges and Livetweetstreaming panels to discuss ways in which social media can also be used for “helping the world” outside of just being the most powerful tool for selling, promoting and marketing brands.
To get into the spirit of goodness, here is a list I just made up of 20 ways in which the power of social media can help change the world for the better:
1. An official Internet Profile page for North Korea where you can leave them mean/nasty comments
2. A federal arts endowment for the creation of new Tumblrs
3. Foursquare check-ins from philanthropic/volunteering events so people know you’re the Mayor of Being A Great Person.
4. A FarmVille version of Haiti that you can pay real money to help rebuild (virtually)
5. A certain number of ReTweets and @-Replies reserved for people who can’t afford Twitter
6. Just put the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan on Craigslist, see if anyone else wants them.
7. Facebook could create special “Dislike” buttons for issues like racism, starvation, Global Warming, Dolphin slaughter, Darfur, etc.
8. Justin Bieber makes a charitable Microdonation every time he gets Tweeted
9. #Hashtags Not Bombs
10. Reddit Against Illiteracy
11. Donate Friendster and MySpace to Goodwill
12. Making Kickstarter available to third-world countries
13. An iPhone app for voting in elections/participating in Democracy
14. Yelp reviews of homeless shelters
15. Israeli-Palestinian conflict intervention by 4Chan
16. A Digg category about conflict mineral mining
17. Free LinkedIn counseling for the unemployed
18. Replace school music programs with iTunes and Ping
19. Donate all of Sneezing Baby Panda’s YouTube hits to saving Pandas from extinction
20. StumbleUpon could gently nudge users in the direction of stuff that actually matters from time to time
(Or you could do things the old-timey/analog way and just Paypal some money to someone who needs it more than you.)
