How Social Media can Actually Help the World

Social media sites by themselves would lose users and contaminate their results if they force-fed charities on the front page.  Users, on the other hand, have the ability to push high-quality, important issues and promote philanthropic ideas.  Still, so few do.  There really needs to be an incentive.

To that end, we came up with a hybrid solution.  If social media sites created proper venues for stories that “helped the world” and users adopted causes to promote, the combination could have the desired effect of promoting charities without tainting the results on the front page.  In short, it would take both parties to bring about the change.

Newsvine and NowPublic have strong communities that really pays more attention to original stories written on the websites by the users than most of the links posted there.  It would take the users themselves, especially the “powerful” ones, to take more of a stand and write about charities (then link to them, of course).  Still, the sites can help promote it through special sections dedicated strictly to charity and posted on the front page.

By creating a category called “Charities” or “Giving Back” or “Philanthropy” or whatever they decided to call it, Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, and the other social media sites would start the ball rolling.  Users would see these new categories and potentially seek out stories to submit to them.  That in itself would be huge as many users would consider the option for the first time in their social media life: “I need to find stories about causes that I believe in.”

My suggestion: find a cause (or two, or ten).  It could be a charity.  It could be something shocking that needs attention.  It could be anything that needs to be brought to the attention of the world.  Find it (or them) and start getting the word out.  Social media is excellent for promoting ideas and causes.  When the election is over, adopt a cause or two and fill your social media sites’ front pages with it.