Think Social at the Paley Center for Media Releases New Report on Social Media in the Public Interest
New York, NY, November 21, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Report highlights 2009 Milestones, top ten trends for 2010 and grants first ThinkSocial Awards to social media innovators including Kiva, SocialVibe, March18 Movement
ThinkSocial, the non-profit initiative dedicated to advancing the use of social media in the public interest, today released Blueprints 1.0, a report detailing trends in social media for the public interest.
The report includes a detailed analysis of each of the award recipients, together with a top ten list of trends identified following an extensive research phase. Highlighted trends from the report include:
· Active Witness/Active Witnessing: Active witnessing occurs when individuals or groups share information and stories about important and often dramatic events through the use of digital tools. Examples include long-established "active witness" network Witness.org, a non-profit that empowers people to tell stories of human rights abuses through video technology.
· Social Production/Mass Collaboration: Social production or mass collaborating occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature, to create a product of significant value and complexity. Examples include Invisible Children, a non-profit that spreads awareness about child soldiers in Northern Uganda, educational charity DonorsChoose.org, and charity: water, which uses Google Earth to track the progress of its projects.
· Social Alignment/Social Aligning: Social aligning occurs when institutions engage with their constituents, consumers or other important stakeholders through social media to identify and take collective action on shared goals—often goals with a public purpose. Examples of social alignment include retail giant Target who recently gave 5% of its profit, or about $3 million a week, to charity. For two weeks this past May, Target recruited Facebook users to help the corporation decide which ten charities would receive the "Bullseye Gives" funds and what percentage of the money the selected charities would receive.
· Social Transacting/Social Transactions: Social transacting occurs when people spend time or money online engaged in activities that generate financial and social value for causes. Social transacting is demonstrated in Zynga's popular virtual farming game, FarmVille, where players can purchase certain charity-linked items with their virtual currency. Zynga's "Sweet Seeds for Haiti" promotion, where 50% of proceeds benefited Haitian charities FUNKOZE.org and FATEM.org, generated $487,000 for the charities.
· Flash Activism/Instant Mobile Organizing: Flash activism occurs when people—often not self-identifying as organizers—launch and participate in fast-formed organizing campaigns through social media in response to significant global, national or local events. For example, rallies against Proposition 8 in California. Cell phone company CREDO Mobile helped people angry about the ban on same-sex marriage assemble protests all over California. By texting a shortcode with your zip code, you would receive a message in return about the rally nearest you.
You can download a full copy of the Blueprint 1.0 Report here: http://think-social.org
Coinciding with the report, the organization also announced the winners of the first annual Think Social awards, highlighting demonstrated innovation in the field.
Winners of the inaugural ThinkSocial Awards include:
· Kiva.org: a peer-to-peer micro-lending web site, enabling entrepreneurs in developing countries to receive loans from lenders around the world.
· SocialVibe: an organization aids charities via brand activities that generate micro-donations.
· The March 18th Movement: founded by Hamid Tehrani and Mideast Youth, seeks to expand the world's understanding of bloggers as de facto journalists, and extend the protections normally accorded to journalists to all those who share information and stories of repression and corruption online.
· Amanda Rose: the founder of Twestival Global and Local, which is a concurrent series of offline events for charity, organized by volunteers in cities around the world via Twitter.
About ThinkSocial
ThinkSocial is a new non-profit initiative dedicated to advancing the use of social media in the public interest. The project is a new initiative of The Paley Center for Media and is initially funded by the Surdna Foundation with cochair support from The Loreen Arbus Foundation, Facebook, Pepsico and Meebo.
ThinkSocial's mission is to connect people and ideas to advance the use of social media to address society’s most pressing challenges. Visit http://think-social.orgfor more information
About The Paley Center for Media
The Paley Center for Media leads the discussion about the cultural, creative, and social significance of television, radio, and emerging platforms for the professional community and media-interested public.
Drawing upon its curators, collection, and relationships with the media community, The Paley Center for Media examines the intersections between media and society. Visit http://paleycenter.org for more information.
Press inquiries contact:
Toby Daniels: toby@think-social.org
Colin Nagy: cnagy@attentionusa.com
###
ThinkSocial, the non-profit initiative dedicated to advancing the use of social media in the public interest, today released Blueprints 1.0, a report detailing trends in social media for the public interest.
The report includes a detailed analysis of each of the award recipients, together with a top ten list of trends identified following an extensive research phase. Highlighted trends from the report include:
· Active Witness/Active Witnessing: Active witnessing occurs when individuals or groups share information and stories about important and often dramatic events through the use of digital tools. Examples include long-established "active witness" network Witness.org, a non-profit that empowers people to tell stories of human rights abuses through video technology.
· Social Production/Mass Collaboration: Social production or mass collaborating occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature, to create a product of significant value and complexity. Examples include Invisible Children, a non-profit that spreads awareness about child soldiers in Northern Uganda, educational charity DonorsChoose.org, and charity: water, which uses Google Earth to track the progress of its projects.
· Social Alignment/Social Aligning: Social aligning occurs when institutions engage with their constituents, consumers or other important stakeholders through social media to identify and take collective action on shared goals—often goals with a public purpose. Examples of social alignment include retail giant Target who recently gave 5% of its profit, or about $3 million a week, to charity. For two weeks this past May, Target recruited Facebook users to help the corporation decide which ten charities would receive the "Bullseye Gives" funds and what percentage of the money the selected charities would receive.
· Social Transacting/Social Transactions: Social transacting occurs when people spend time or money online engaged in activities that generate financial and social value for causes. Social transacting is demonstrated in Zynga's popular virtual farming game, FarmVille, where players can purchase certain charity-linked items with their virtual currency. Zynga's "Sweet Seeds for Haiti" promotion, where 50% of proceeds benefited Haitian charities FUNKOZE.org and FATEM.org, generated $487,000 for the charities.
· Flash Activism/Instant Mobile Organizing: Flash activism occurs when people—often not self-identifying as organizers—launch and participate in fast-formed organizing campaigns through social media in response to significant global, national or local events. For example, rallies against Proposition 8 in California. Cell phone company CREDO Mobile helped people angry about the ban on same-sex marriage assemble protests all over California. By texting a shortcode with your zip code, you would receive a message in return about the rally nearest you.
You can download a full copy of the Blueprint 1.0 Report here: http://think-social.org
Coinciding with the report, the organization also announced the winners of the first annual Think Social awards, highlighting demonstrated innovation in the field.
Winners of the inaugural ThinkSocial Awards include:
· Kiva.org: a peer-to-peer micro-lending web site, enabling entrepreneurs in developing countries to receive loans from lenders around the world.
· SocialVibe: an organization aids charities via brand activities that generate micro-donations.
· The March 18th Movement: founded by Hamid Tehrani and Mideast Youth, seeks to expand the world's understanding of bloggers as de facto journalists, and extend the protections normally accorded to journalists to all those who share information and stories of repression and corruption online.
· Amanda Rose: the founder of Twestival Global and Local, which is a concurrent series of offline events for charity, organized by volunteers in cities around the world via Twitter.
About ThinkSocial
ThinkSocial is a new non-profit initiative dedicated to advancing the use of social media in the public interest. The project is a new initiative of The Paley Center for Media and is initially funded by the Surdna Foundation with cochair support from The Loreen Arbus Foundation, Facebook, Pepsico and Meebo.
ThinkSocial's mission is to connect people and ideas to advance the use of social media to address society’s most pressing challenges. Visit http://think-social.orgfor more information
About The Paley Center for Media
The Paley Center for Media leads the discussion about the cultural, creative, and social significance of television, radio, and emerging platforms for the professional community and media-interested public.
Drawing upon its curators, collection, and relationships with the media community, The Paley Center for Media examines the intersections between media and society. Visit http://paleycenter.org for more information.
Press inquiries contact:
Toby Daniels: toby@think-social.org
Colin Nagy: cnagy@attentionusa.com
###
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ThinkSocial
Toby Daniels
347 602 1244
http://think-social.org/
Toby Daniels
347 602 1244
http://think-social.org/
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