Social Media and the Social Good
I just returned from the Web 2.0 Expo in New York and my head is spinning with all the things I learned and the ideas I'm dying to try out. But what struck me most was Tim O'Reilly's keynote, one he's delivered before, in which he called on the best and brightest working in technology to cast aside silly little viral Facebook applications and focus instead on something important.
He ran through a list, including climate change, income inequity, slavery, energy, etc. and everyone smiled and nodded. Then we all went back to our jobs trying to push viral Facebook applications to test our friends on their knowledge of 80s movies. I did quite well on that quiz, by the way.
I thought about this again today when I read a New York Times story about a soon-to-launch startup that aims to capture the voices of students to help high schoolers choose schools. It's a pretty typical story about the power of social networks, including the obligatory clueless marketer:
“I’ve got to be honest with you,” Christopher Gruber, a vice president who oversees admissions at Davidson College, told me. “I’m not spending a ton of time navigating those student-driven sites. It’s too much to manage. My sense is that the traditional big players, like Princeton Review, are the major sources for online information too, in part because those are the names that parents still recognize. Those are the names that are going to have greater panache, and so those are probably the ones that will be turned to. The ones that we supply information to are the ones that we spend the most time on, filling out surveys for them to make sure that that information is accurate.”
Then, as the story reports, we find out that about 1/8th of the Davidson student population has already submitted content to the site. Good luck Mr. Gruber.
In any case, the reporter eventually asks how this can be a "grass roots" kind of thing when it's lining the pockets of major investors. This is commerce, pure and simple, masquerading as social change.
Tags: new york times, O'Reilly, public good, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Expo NY
Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on September 22, 2008 at 11:14 AM
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Comments
If positive social change occurs through commerce, is it no longer positive?
Posted by: Owen Johnson | September 22, 2008 11:32 AM
I think in many cases it can be one in the same, but the pressures are often different.
GM is a great example of this. The top brass has often said that it would like to explore more electric and alternative fuel vehicles, but it still has to satisfy the stockholders. That means making vehicles that people buy. For years those were SUVs.
They are beholden to the stockholders.
Posted by: Chuck Tanowitz
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September 22, 2008 11:42 AM