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CauseWorld is the latest social media tool for mobile devices, vying with the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla. These applications all aim to allow users to keep track of one another and to “check-in” to different venues around town, ultimately providing a sort of personalized map of ones’ favorite destinations and hang-outs. These applications add further game-like aspects to encourage users to get out an explore their cities and connect with others. While I personally have yet to be drawn into the world of Foursquare, I am assured by many that this style of application will be the next Twitter in social media.
CauseWorld takes the premise of these programs and extends it to social good. Users of CauseWorld receive Karma points for checking into different areas of town. These Karma points can be spent to provide donations to various charity organizations or causes. It is an extremely simple, yet powerful idea, and it is easy to go overboard when imagining how such a concept could rapidly spread as a novel advertising method. In essence, the spread of such social applications would allow businesses to market products at the location of the users, while users still have incentive to check in for the points (or badges on Foursquare). It is the sort of potential win-win we’d all like to see: businesses could tap a new social network phenomenon to bring customers to their doorsteps while raising brand loyalty and satisfying user desires to ‘do good’ through charitable giving.
Of course, there are those who doubt the ability of CauseWorld to compete with the more established applications, citing other charitable sites such as GoodSearch that maintain an online presence, but have not entirely made it big yet. However, if CauseWorld isn’t the next social media giant, it is certainly to be hoped that its competition flatters its innovation through imitation!
A little bit further from home, but in keeping with our post last week, buzz this week is focused on One Young World, a summit that kicked off today in London. One Young World is a gathering of youthful (25 years or younger) leaders meant to represent each of the countries of the world. Over a thousand representatives from over one hundred countries will gather to and address such global crises as climate change, poverty and economic justice.
If this sounds nice and all, but perhaps a tad on the dreamy-eyed and unrealistic side, consider some of the heavy-hitters that are leading the discussion: 3 Nobel Laureates to start. Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the UN, Desmond Tutu, activist and humanitarian, Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and microfinance. Many other leaders within the humanitarian, political, and social enterprise sectors will be speaking with the delegates. While it may be unlikely that any world-shaking ideas will be formulated over the course of the 3 day event, the delegates aim to gather intellectual capital and resources for creating effective social programs/businesses upon their return home.
Ultimately, One Young World hopes not only to be a forum for reform, but also to establish a network of active and talented young individuals across the globe. It is hoped that this program may be useful in empowering the leaders of tomorrow, and that these individuals can be collected in their efforts. And when a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens come together…. Well, you know the rest…
Zoosa is one of the latest websites to enter the social media fray, targeted towards becoming the Facebook of social impact. Mark McGlade, founder and CEO of the Zoosa company, developed the site as a way for those involved in the social entrepreneurship movement to get connected and learn about the activities of others.
“Zoosa aggregates social enterprise resources (news, blogs, tweets, & opportunities) to create a single destination for professionals to learn about and get involved in the clean-tech, education, and nonprofit sectors.”
The site also aims to host a comprehensive list of job offerings within non-profit and socially minded businesses, as well as volunteer and internship opportunities. The site will also be a promotion platform for these organizations to promote the work and impact that their organizations are having. Indeed, just to set up an account, Zoosa queries the user to provide answers to a wide array of probing questions; anything from the percentage of their income they donate to charity to the number of kilowatt hours of energy they use a year. The answers are then displayed on the front page of the user’s public profile, the sort of nitty-gritty transparency those in the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) movement frequently drool over.
Of course, just opening a personal, individual account also prompts some of the same sort of probing questions, right down to “Do you compost at home?”. In setting up the skeleton of my own account, I alternated between feelings of embarrassment (that I was doing so poorly in this or that area), and feelings of immodesty (that I should be disclosing such private matters for just anyone). It was an interesting exercise, to disclose the impact of my life in a manner not unlike that which the CSR movement wishes to make standard for businesses.
Of course, the website is still in Beta, and it is uncertain how much it will take off. Furthermore, there are those who already look upon the site with a critical eye, questioning the value of a site that encourages “promoting the self-glorification of our acts of philanthropy”. Indeed, I too share some split ambivalence in a design that actively encourages a sort of neo-hippie bragging about ones’ personal carbon footprint/volunteer activities. It is an uncertain feeling that is not much helped by the fact that I cannot find a profile on Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Zoosa, for founder Mark McGlade! Nor will the profiles developed on this website be of much use if there isn’t some oversight and verification of the self-provided answers on social impact, at least for the larger institutions.
Yet, on the other hand, I have a strong desire to see some sort of tool emerge that aggregates knowledge of social responsibility within different organizations and companies. A one-stop shop to dig up the dirt, or unearth the good deeds, of a company you are uncertain about. If this site also has the side-effect of bringing up some uncomfortable questions about how we conduct our own day-to-day existence, perhaps it is all for the better?
There has been a lot of excitement in the business sector regarding innovation in social media outlets. Regardless if you are talking about social entrepreneurship, or plain business-as-usual, there is no denying that established tools like Facebook and Twitter have already changed the face of business promotion. Furthermore, it is likely that the impact of these tools and other emerging platforms will continue to expand. Among the new social business start-ups poised to catch fire is one promoting the fairly novel idea of microvolunteerism: charitable volunteer activities that can be performed in tiny increments of time (1-5 minutes each). Even better, these mission can be conducted from the comfort of a computer chair, or on the go with a smart phone.
Enter The Extraordinaries, a team based out of San Francisco that collects a number of volunteer activities related to dozens of organizations into one space, offering subscribers the chance to take a crack at any of hundreds of projects – one tiny bite at a time. Typically, many of the projects offered have been archival or anecdotal. For example, one can take 30 seconds to tag objects in a photograph for a museum, or send words of encouragement to a struggling student halfway around the world. Other projects seem somewhat more ambitious, such as searching through legislation for pork, or facilitating the documentation of cases of pollution, water waste, or abuse. While the vision of co-founder Jacob Colker is admirable, the technology is still very new, and there has been some ambivalence regarding the efficacy and reach of such a ‘crowdsourced’ volunteer approach (see also: NPR’s take).
The winds may be changing however, as earlier last week The Extraordinaries launched a new mission related to the disaster unfolding in Haiti. By pairing the flood of images pouring out from Port-au-Prince with eager volunteers, the mission aims to facilitate recovery of lost persons by creating a database of tagged images. Families missing a loved one can go to this database to search, or to post a picture so that others can help them look. It is a monumentally ambitious project that deserves some attention for its’ novelty alone. While the effectiveness of The Extraordinaries in this mission is fully dependent on the size and activity of its members, I will surely be watching closely as this project unfolds. Even a minor victory in this endeavor could have large repercussions for the future of volunteerism, as well as implications for what we can collectively do with our downtime.
