Can social networking create social change?

see what you're getting at. Chris and I decided that we wanted to talk about something that the two of us are are very interested in. Um, I'm I've written about this quite a bit in the blogs, blogs dot hou stuff works dot com, and um, it's something that

I continue to really be interested in. And it's the whole concept of social networking and social change, all right, because increasingly we're seeing social networking becoming an important part of uh social activities throughout the population, especially in the

Western world, um, the over in Asia. It's a little harder for us to tell just because you know, we we don't have that experience, but we see a lot of people using sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or kit even that kind of stuff too, sort of a keep touch with friends, past information along make recommendations to one another, um even share links like We're starting to see social networking become just as important in a way as search engines.

People are discovering content by seeing what their friends suggest. And I know this might actually surprise some people because a lot of people, for example, with Twitter, when it first came out, the question on the homepage was you know, what are you doing? And people say, well, I don't really want to visit a site in which I have to read about everyone going to the bathroom and making a sandwich, finding the remote for their shoes. I am tying my shoe, taping the terrier to the wall. It

gets kind of slow on the weekends. Okay, okay, But but the thing is I mean and that and when I wrote that post about Facebook light on the blogs, blogs, dot house, stuffworks, dot com. Um, you know, we got a lot of feedback for people who didn't like it because they couldn't get to their applications. They wanted to play Alexulis, they wanted to, you know, get into Farmville and they couldn't. And you can't do that on Facebook. But because Facebook Light is a stripped down version of

the site where you're just getting essentially status updates. So you know, you might be thinking, well, these sites are really just for play, and a lot of people do use them for that, but um, they also enable a kind of communication in a broader form that that that also makes it possible to do things like, uh, you know, organize uh, I mean even for fun, organize a flash mob, you know, and you might just want to get a group together to to do a goofy little fake pillow

fight in the middle of of downtown New York or something, or or organize a tweet up and say, you know, hey, I'm at Joe's Bar down on Fourteenth Street and have random people who happened to be in the area drop in and go, hey, you know, yeah, nice to meet you. I'm Twitter. You know this is me. But you can also utilize these same social networking tools to try and affect a change where you're trying to to either get a message across so that you're trying to to raise

awareness or you're actually trying to change something specifically. And uh, we wanted to kind of talk about how people have used social networking to attempt this and whether or not it's been successful. And I would argue that in large part, uh, actually making a change has not been that successful through social networking. But that's mainly because I don't know that anyone has necessarily figured out the best way of doing it,

yet everybody does it a little bit differently. Um. Last year, I wrote a blog post about Moldova because some people were trying to hold a protest and the government was, uh, let's just say not too thrilled about it, um, and then it was it was a little violent, as I remember, but you know, not like the they ran situation, which we'll mention in a moment um. But people were using their Twitter and Facebook status is to indicate where they should meet, and it's very difficult for those who are

not tuned in. If the authorities are not paying attention to it, um, it's very difficult for them to figure out how hundreds of people are leaving the scene before they can get there and reassembling in another location which has been organized, you know, using these networks. And I mean it could also be done over SMS, text messaging over your phone, which is you know, that's essentially what

Twitter has built on top of. But yes, you could do it on a much more UH scale down version where you just take Twitter out of the equation entirely.

And in some cases that's actually a good idea because if you have left your Twitter account public, then anyone could see what you are updating UM just by following the public timeline, even if they're not following you specifically, And before long, people in charge may actually or the people who oppose whatever your position is UH could end up keeping up with you on every move you make, and because you're essentially broadcasting it, and if they're able

to keep up with it, then they're able to possibly negate whatever move you want to make, and then you're back to square one. So UM. Yeah, there's some downfalls to this kind of approach of using social networking to to UM organize protests, which we really saw in Iran. Yeah, one of the things before we get to that, one of the things that makes this possible is UM and this is not even a Twitter adaptation. This is something that other people came up with. UH. Is the use

of the hashtag UM. You might say, well, if thousands of people are posting Twitter messages. How you know, in the public timeline, how am I supposed to figure out what's going on in you know this particular situation. Well, people have taken to using hashtags, which is using the pound sign, the number sign or the octathorpe as I like to use it, um and uh, you know, establishing a particular tag so that everybody is putting that particular string of text in their Twitter messages makes it much

easier to search. Yes, and most Twitter programs that I've seen lately, third third party programs allow you to track, um, those trending topics, so you can see if a lot of people are are mentioning including this tag, then it is very easy to identify what's going on with the particular so excuse me social situation and um, you can

you can follow it very very easily. And another thing that people have been doing, which is one of those those gestures that you can very quickly identify as Okay, something's going on because everyone seems to be doing this, would be changing your avatar on Twitter. This became There are two instances I can think of on Twitter where this really kind of swept across the service. At least the people I follow one was the blackout in response

to Australia's UM policy to filter the Internet. Now, in this case, Australia was talking about creating a law that would allow UM, the government to tell Internet service providers UM what they can and can't let through the country, and it was getting to a level of censorship and information control that a lot of people were not very comfortable with Internet service providers. They weren't very comfortable with it.

I mean, these are private companies that are being told by the government what they can and can't do as far as their main business UM. And as a response, in order to raise awareness, UH, people began to turn their their Twitter avatars into just a black square and uh, you know, at first that just got a little bit of attention, But then some pretty high ranking as far as followers go, Twitter members began to do this, Like Stephen Fry, who has hundreds of thousands of people following him.

He blacked out his avatar and then left a message about what was going on. And then you started seeing black avatars pop up all over the place, just just black boxes, and that's all that was there was to it. And then usually there'd be a link somewhere like why is my avatar like this? Read this, and it would link to an article about the situation. As a result, UM, the whole policy got a lot of attention directed toward it,

and they ended up delaying that decision. UM the last night I had heard that decision actually did go through, but it went through ages after the first discussion. So it was something where the the reaction did kind of cause some change, but it was it was more of a delay than anything else. But the other case where people changed their avatar, that was very got the end up making the news. It was more than just something that happened on Twitter. Was the Iranian election and the

fallout that followed it. Um. You began to see people change their avatars where they would give them all a green tent. Yes, some people would UH replace their avatar was a simple green square, as in the case of the blackout, but others were most I think most people were tainting, which is UH, which is what I saw the most frequently, and the idea and they were also going in to change their settings to the time zone where Tehran is located, which is the capital of Iran.

And UM the idea would was twofold really to show support for the Iranian protesters, but also to theoretically confuse the government UH, using the hashtag and the time zone to make it appear as though UH there were more people involved than actually were, and to maybe mask the identities of those who were involved. UM. At least that was the justification that that I was reading about. And

many people are still UH. I still have not changed their avatars back to their original state, even though those UH revolts were taking place last summer. Yeah, this was back in the yeah, mid mid two nine, depending on people listen way way after the fact. So so, yeah, the and this was one of those things where it definitely helped raise awareness very quickly UM, and some people were using Twitter and Facebook to try and organize meet ups.

But then quickly there was a message that went around saying, you know, you probably shouldn't UM published this stuff because then it just gives the information to the Iranian government, which was monitoring both Facebook and Twitter as much as it could to try and determine what protesters were up to and what their plans were so that they could have a response unit in place. UM to take care of UH, to take care of that without it getting

out of control. And then and there were also reports, uh what, I don't know if they were ever substantiated, but there were reports that the Iranian government was actually publishing its own tweets as if it were they were coming from protesters, to try and spread misinformation, confused matters um to uh, to kind of take some of the steam out of the movements so that it wouldn't be

as effective. And that's one of the big issues about social networking is that when it gets into something like this, when it's really highly politicized, it's hard to tell if the information you're receiving is genuine or not without it, without it linking to some other objective source that you know, for a act has got really good fact checking, really

strong editorial voice. Um. Without that kind of link back to something that you can rely upon, you have to worry that maybe whatever it is you're reading isn't completely genuine. And uh, I mean that's that's the case with anything you see on any social networking site, but in particular when it's talking about something like trying to make a big change. Well, um, I think speaking of change, we should talk about the social media event that's going on

right now as we are recording that. Because UM, this is another particularly positive way I think that social media is maybe drawing attention to and helping organize efforts to UM help the people in Haiti. UM. Just a few days before we recorded this podcast, UM, there was a magnitude seven earthquake UM that killed thousands and thousands of people and ends thousands more. Umfrastructure in Haiti is in ruins right now, and UM it's actually only a couple

of days after that as we are recording this. So UM as of January, this is an amazing thing. UM. The American Red Cross was able to report that it had raised four points seven million dollars simply from people who were text messaging. And you might say, well, how are they doing that. There's a company UM called m give. UM. The president, Tony Aello, was actually talking to Lauras Adell on NPR as I was driving home yesterday and I listened to their his explanation of things. UM, this is

a pretty neat deal. UM. You you get a code, a text messaging code, UM five digit number, and UM you send a short message to that number. And basically what happens is and give works with the phone company, your your cell phone provider, and the nonprofit organization in this case the American Red Cross, or there are a couple others like White Left GJN has one UM and

UH once. What happens is if you send a text message to that number with the the pre organized message, they will take ten dollar donation and debit that to your cell phone account. That's that's in the case of the Red Cross one. I think White Left John's it's five dollars, but yeah, it's the same same concept, So it's whatever whatever they've agreed to. I mean, it tends to be around the five to ten dollar mark because that's that's an amount that most people are comfortable giving.

UM you ask for more than then it gets a little more complex. Although the Red Cross one allows you to give up to three times using that number. Okay, so you can. You could give thirty dollars if you wanted to using that UM. So that I mean, and of course just doesn't prevent you from donating in other ways as well. It's just one of those things that makes it very very easy to react in a very timely matter without it without it taking a lot of

time or effort, on your part. I know it sounds kind of callous, but I really do believe that the easier you make it to donate to a cause, the more people will donate. As soon as you start putting barriers in there where like okay, well as soon as you get home call this number, or as soon as you get home log into this website. Once you start putting that time difference in there, from the moment when someone hears about something to the moment when someone can

do something about it, right, you cut down on participation. Well, well, this is exactly what Mr Riello was saying, that it's just making it very, very simple. And they had interviews with a couple of people who had been making donations. One guy they talked to um had received a message on his cell phone and said, well, you know, this is so easy. I'm just gonna reply right away and do this, and it just it was just very very simple, very very easy. The ten dollar amount, Mr Rallo said, Um,

it's a very it's the same kind of thing. Ten dollars doesn't really seem like all that much, but it makes a difference for people who might not have otherwise donated. When that's I mean, because Yeah, to know, there's not is not a lot for any individual, but when when you get such an effective campaign together collectively, that does

become a pretty large sum of money. Well. Kerry Houseman, who is a spokesperson for the American Red Cross, said that based on how effective this is, she expects that this is going to make real lasting change in the way that they are able to raise money in the wake of a tragedy like this, because, um, it's just so simple, yeah, that it happened. I'm hoping that this does.

I hope that's the case. I hope it's not the opposite where it becomes like a unique event where people do this because it makes them feel good, and then the next time something happens they say, well, I don't need to donate to that because I donated back after the earthquake in Haiti, so why would I you know, I don't need to donate again. Hopefully that won't happen, especially because like you were saying, I mean, it makes

it so much easier. Um, it removes those areas. It's not asking for a lot of money, and in many cases, this this money is you know, it's it's going to causes that are vital for people's survival. So well, um, you know there is such a thing as donor fatigue. Um. But but no, I think and and of course m give did not pop up mysteriously overnight after the the Haiti disaster, so that this is something that that has been going on for some time and this just puts

it in the spotlight. But um, there there are other ways in which social media has helped. Um, having the meme spread through Facebook and having a link say, you know, it explains here's what's going on. You can donate to Care or the American Red Cross or one of many other organizations. Just click here and it takes you right to the page. It's right there in your live feed and makes it so much easier to you to identify

and share with people. With Twitter, I mean Twitter really helped broadcast the whole text message thing quite a bit, because I mean, if we're just talking about text messaging, we're not really tough about social media, right. There are social networking, uh beyond networking with your immediate social circle. But there were so many people who were talking about on Twitter that it was trending then and that helped

quite a bit too. I'm sure that that really gave a boost to the UM to UH submissions of of the you know, the ten dollar donations. Well, UM, actually getting back to how easy this is, but back to a point that you made earlier. UM. Caroline McCarthy Sena had has also written an article in which she was she had talked to the marketing director for Charity Navigator, which is a website UM that basically evaluates nonprofit organizations

and non governmental organizations. UH, you know, based on where's the money going? UM, can you count on it actually being used to help the people in whatever situation you want to help them? And how much of it is going toward administrative costs? How how reputable is the charity? Yeah, very important questions to ask. And it's a very it's a very neat site. But the director, marketing director send Manuity UH said that four thousand bogus donation sites were

set up after Hurricane Katrina. UM. And and so it's very important to make sure that where you're making your donation, UM, you know, is actually ending up where you think it

is going. And it's very easy with things like you r L shorteners and you know, five digit codes that you would text message to make sure that you are getting it from a reputable source, and then you're actually making a donation at the site you think you're doing that because, uh, you know, it is very easy for a scammer to set up a site to try to fool people, and you can bet that they will do

that in this case as well. On a related note, I noticed already that there are Facebook groups popping up where it's saying things like if a million people join this group, I will donate a dollar per person for twa haiti or whatever. A lot of those end up being bogus. It's just someone who's creating a group and wants to see if they can maybe actually get to

a million people. Um it's those are a lot harder to to research than the charities because, uh, you know, often you don't have any real information about the people who started it. I would just recommend that maintain a healthy dose of skepticism whenever you encounter those kind of groups, especially if they want you to go to a different link, because that's a good chance that that's going to take you somewhere, whether there's some malware or a phishing scam

or something like that. UM. I always hesitate to join any sort of Facebook group. Uh, mainly for that reason, I would rather look into alternatives. It's not that I don't want to help, It's that I want to make sure that my help is going to the right place and then I'm not going to suffer for helping trying

to help someone else. So any group where you see like, join this group, and after we hit a million users, we get to you know, this much is gonna be donated, because honestly, why would someone put that kind of of uh of a requirement? There isn't that Isn't that really ultimately heartless to say I need a million people to join this group, and if a million people join, I'll donate this money. Why why not just donate the money now? Without a million people joining? What benefit is there to

have a million people joined the group? I mean, there's no reason for it. So once you start asking those questions, critical thinking is so important on the Internet, folks, and especially when you're talking about things about trying to make a social change, because everyone wants the world to be a better place and we all want to feel like we've contributed to that. But let's make sure that we're

really contributing to that we're not just fooling ourselves. Um, and that that kind of I don't know if you want to mention anything more before I moved on, but there was one other kind of related thing to this I was going to go off on. I was going to uh to mention that Caroline McCarthy said that if you receive an email from someone claiming that they are a victim, that's also sort of a red flag. Yeah, yeah, that you know, Hey, my my house got destroyed in

this problem. It's essentially a twist on the Nigerian scam. It's really and which has been around forever. I mean that that's that was facts stuff before it was email. So, UM, I wanted to mention another thing that happened recently on Facebook which tries me crazy, which is the Facebook bra color deal. So if you were on Facebook and you're a guy, and you notice that all your female friends were posting colors, and you were wondering why and you never found out, um, it was it was kind of

this playful way of raising awareness for breast cancer research. Um. Women were posting the color of their the bra they were wearing as their status. So you might see one that says blue or or black or white lace or something like that, and then eventually you started to put it together and you're like, oh, that's odd. And there was no explanation at the time why they were posting these colors. Now that's problem number one. If you don't

explain why you're doing something, how can you raise awareness? Okay, problem no one. If you if there is no explanation, you are not raising awareness. All you're doing is being kind of flirtatious by saying, oh, look at my the color of my under things that you cannot see they are actually black and blue. Doesn't make a damn bit of difference people. Part two breast cancer we're pretty much aware of it. Turns out everyone has heard of this.

Breast cancer awareness is probably a non issue. What's the What's that issue is research money and uh, you know, funding for for finding a cure, prevention, that kind of stuff. That's still extremely important. Not so much important about the awareness the little pink ribbon not doing as much as you think it is and donating money to services that actually are trying to cure the disease. That is where the action is needed. Uh. And this this goes for

beyond the web. We actually had someone come in and talk to us about breast cancer at house stuffworks dot com. Correct, and she pointed out that the the whole pink movement is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing in the sense that it's a great marketing pr thing

where everyone's really aware of it. But it's a curse in the sense that there are a lot of companies that come out that try to take advantage of people by selling these pink items saying it's for breast cancer research and donating very little or none no money at all to actual research, and either keeping most or all of the profits for themselves. It's the same sort of thing about these little Facebook gestures. They don't ultimately do anything other than have you know, people be a little

playful about what color their underwear is. Um, that's just it upsets me because the effort that people could that people are putting toward being silly and mysterious and and flirtatious, could be put towards actually doing something actionable that makes a difference. And if you leave Facebook thinking that you made a difference by posting the color of your underwear, um, it's it's kind of a disservice to the people who are actually struggling with breast cancer. You could instead do

something real to help these people. So, UM, okay, I think I'm done ranting. Now, Okay, that was obviously something I feel strongly about. Apparently I'm going to take a breath about pie and now I wanted to mention also Anonymous Anonymous which has used social networking to get its own message across UH, mostly through YouTube, which is in a way a kind of social networking site, not quite the same as Twitter and Facebook, but they've also used

other social networking to arrange meetings to do things like protests. Scientology, Um, the Church of Scientology is practices, I should say, not the religion itself. That's what they try and make clear anyway, and there their videos, but they also tend to use wikis a lot, which is kind of outside of social networking, but they use a combination of those things in order to organize and UH and take action UM as they

see fit. So social networking we are starting to see it play a larger role within trying to make a difference in the world. UH. And in some cases, like when we were talking about Haiti. It's helping, but it's mostly in that case directing action toward a different link or a different method to to donate money or whatever. Um, we're not really seeing it to the point yet where social networking itself is making the huge change. But I

think that's gonna you know them. I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of this year, two thousand and ten, if we didn't see an incident that was was greatly impacted and possibly dependent upon social networking. Perhaps it'll be interesting. You know, I'm a shutter to think what kinds of events because it seems like good or bad. Yeah, it seems it seems like a lot of these are the ones that we've talked about have their roots in some you know, event that is very very serious at nature.

So hopeful see something really positive. And I mean that's the thing is that, Yes, so the event is probably very serious in nature, but the response to the event is often very inspiring. Um. So I mean I would hate, I hate to see that a tragic event to come a necessity in order before you see an inspiring response. I mean, yes, I agree with you there, but I'm thankful that there are people who still respond with such uh compassion and speed to these events that actually is

very encouraging for someone who you know. As they get older, it gets a little more cynical. I had proven wrong once in a while, I had, you hadn't. Okay, Well, if any of you have noticed, you can write me, Actually you'll write both of us. The email address is tech stuff at house stuff works dot com. We'll talk

to you again, possibly through social networking really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com, and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the house stuff Works home h brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you