WebProNews

Tag: Social Good

  • Reddit Helps Find Missing Mom with Alzheimer’s in NYC

    Reddit Helps Find Missing Mom with Alzheimer’s in NYC

    I’ll be the first to admit, when someone says “reddit is on the case!” I tend to cringe a bit. We all remember that unfortunate situation shortly after the Boston Marathon bombings were the reddit sleuths took it upon themselves to figure the whole thing out. We know how that ended.

    But sometimes the crowdsourcing works.

    Yesterday, a New York City man made a plea in the r/nyc subreddit: My Mom has Alzheimer’s, she’s missing in the Upper West side of Manhattan, and I need your help.

    “My mother went missing yesterday (4/21/14) after wandering out of my parent’s apartment on W 69 St between Central Park West and Columbus. She was alone in the apartment at the time, and we believe she left in the early afternoon,” said user Josh Goldberg.

    “Her name is May Goldberg. She is 59 years old, Chinese, 5’6″ 115 lbs. She has shoulder-length black hair and we believe she might be wearing a white, long-sleeve, zip-up fleece (NY1 article lists alternative clothing that she MIGHT be wearing). She speaks both Mandarin Chinese and English. She walks with a slight limp due to hip-replacement surgery she had several years ago. She has severe dementia.”

    Along with notifying the police, Goldberg provided the reddit community images of his mother and a link to an article about her

    In about seven hours, his mother had been found.

    “Hi guys. I am so glad May will be shortly reunited with her family. I was walking home from work around 9:30-10PM and I noticed May at East 47th and Lexington Avenue. As I saw Josh’s post in the afternoon she looked very familiar. I quickly pulled out my phone and visited this page to ensure it is indeed her. When I realized it’s her, I approached her, asked for her name, told her that her family is looking for her, and took her to Hyatt Hotel lobby to contact the police. The gentleman and lady at the Hyatt front desk were extremely helpful and they contacted the police. Two police officers arrived within 3 minutes. They identified May and I believe they called for an ambulance. In the meantime, I quickly sent a personal message to Josh via Reddit informing him that her mom has been found and that she is with the police,” said user geryorama.

    Reddit has dubbed him the ‘Where’s Waldo’ champion of the world, having found Goldberg in a city of eight million people.

    Josh Goldberg took to his post to update r/nyc that his mother had been found, and to thank the community for their help.

    “MY MOM HAS BEEN FOUND! She is safe, but she is being checked out at the hospital as a precaution. A million thanks to /u/geryorama for finding her on the street and alerting the authorities. The outpouring of support has been completely overwhelming. My family and I send a HUGE thank you to the entire Reddit community. You are amazing. Thank you,” he said.

    Gotta love a happy ending.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • YouTube Launches New Campaigns Tool for Nonprofits

    It’s campaign season, and YouTube has been an integral part of that by streaming the conventions and debates live on their Elections Hub. Now, they’re turning to another type of campaign.

    YouTube has just launched another tool to help the nonprofit organizations enrolled in their YouTube Nonprofit program. Now, YouTube wants to give channel owners a “digital thermometer” for their videos.

    It’s simply called “Campaigns,” and it allows YouTube Nonprofit members to set specific goals and broadcast them to viewers.

    “This new feature allows nonprofits to create campaigns with goals like increasing views or subscribers, track their progress, and let people to contribute to their goals,” says the company in a blog post. “A campaign consists of one or more videos…Once a campaign is created, videos in that campaign will show an overlay on them, encouraging viewers to contribute to the campaign.”

    Not only will the video itself show an overlay with the progress bar, but the campaign will display front and center on the nonprofit’s channel. The Campaigns box with show the goal progress bar, how many days left in the campaign, as well as the number of new shares of the particular video(s).

    According to YouTube, they now have over 18,000 nonprofits enrolled in the program. They recently gave the option to include a more prominent donate button inside videos and also held the Next Cause program, a summit that enables charitable organizations to participate in a summit that gave them information on how to better achieve their goals.

  • Touch Yourself for Breast Cancer Awareness, and Share It on Facebook

    Touch Yourself for Breast Cancer Awareness, and Share It on Facebook

    This isn’t your mother’s breast cancer awareness campaign.

    October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and as a result you may have seen a lot of pink ribbons floating around. That’s cool and all, but another campaign just wants you to touch yourself.

    “This October, Women’s Health + F*ck Cancer want you to Touch Yourself. Seriously! Not only is it entertaining, it can also save your life. 90% of cancer is curable if caught in stage one. So, take the pledge to Touch Yourself and tell all the women you love to get handsy too.”

    Here’s how you make breast cancer awareness go viral: the Touch Yourself campaign has its own Facebook app, which asks people to take the pledge to self-screen or get screened. Once someone takes the pledge, they’re asked to share a “postcard” with their Facebook friends to spread the message.

    Guys, you can participate too. Once you pledge, you can choose a postcard fit for a woman or one fit for a man. After you send postcards, the app lets you see your impact – or just how many people you’ve “activated to touch themselves.”

    If you’ve never heard of F*ck Cancer, it’s an alternative cancer awareness organization that takes a more agressive approach to the disease. And seriously, who can argue their message – f*ck cancer, indeed. Here’s what Founder and CEO Yael Cohen had to say about why the organization was formed:

    “Why didn’t I just support an existing charity? I thought about it, hard. But ultimately, I found most existing cancer organizations were research-focused, which is incredibly important, but not my fight. I’m not a researcher so couldn’t contribute scientifically and couldn’t raise the billions of dollars needed to find a cure. I can, however, change the way society perceives cancer; from something we wait to get and pray there’s a cure to something we’re actively working to prevent, actively looking for and finding when it’s most curable.”

    If you’ve ever known someone affected by breast cancer, or any other cancer for that matter – you know how important early detection really is. This is a campaign for a good cause, with a little bit of bite to it. So touch yourself, and tell others to do the same.

    [via Mashable]

  • How’s That for Karma: Reddit Earns Guinness Record for Largest Online Secret Santa Game

    How’s That for Karma: Reddit Earns Guinness Record for Largest Online Secret Santa Game

    The crown jewel of reddit’s international anonymous gift exchange program redditgifts, the secret santa contest, has just been awarded a Guinness World Record.

    Reddit first announced their intentions of going for a World Record back in November of 2011. Their secret santa contest from 2010 had over 17,0000 participants from 90 different countries, a record in its own right. But they wanted to make it official with the Guinness people.

    And with secret santa 2011, they’ve done it. Well, you’ve done. The World Record-winning totals were 30,250 participants in 115 different countries.

    According to reddit, we can thank someguyfromcanada for this record:

    In March 2011 (I think) we started getting PMs and emails from the reddit user someguyfromcanada. He was saying that he wanted to make it his personal mission to get reddit and redditgifts into the record books. He started with tweets and emails directed at Guinness, took the campaign to the reddit community and eventually, months later, Guinness decided that they were going to create a new world’s record category for us! So everyone, please, take a moment and thank someguyfromcanada. Without him, this would have never happened.

    This year’s secret santa game will be even bigger, according to reddit. But of course, you shouldn’t wait until December to join redditgifts and start gifting all over the world.

    In celebration, here are some reddit employees with their Guinness World Record, drinking some Guinness.

    [via redditgifts]

  • When Things Fall Apart: New Red Cross Campaign Destroys, Then Reassembles Your Twitter Pic

    I’ll admit, I’m one of the most skeptical people you will find when it comes to lackadaisical social media activism. Some people call it “slacktivism,” and I tend to agree in most circumstances. If you change your Facebook or Twitter profile pic for a few days, or maybe a week, does it really do anything to help a cause?

    And if so, isn’t there more you could be doing to help said cause if you’re really serious about it? I’m fully aware that if enough people participate in social media activism, it will at least generate conversation, which is never a bad thing. I just worry that some people edit their profile, or post one status or tweet and think they’re done – that nothing else is necessary.

    I feel a bit differently about a new social awareness campaign, partly because I think it’s really cool and partly because it at least involves some level of real action (albeit just a donation).

    It’s called “When Things Fall Apart,” and it works by destroying your Twitter avatar and gradually rebuilding it in 12-hour increments.

    “All over the world, when things fall apart, the Red Cross puts them back together.” That’s the simply message at the beginning of this promo video, and it’s also the basic premise behind the campaign. Things, like your Twitter pic, may fall apart, but they will be pieced back together by the good folks at the Red Cross.

    Check out how it works below:

    To get started, all you have to do is make a $10 donation to the Red Cross, then let the application take over.

    The project was developed at the comp.social lab and Georgia Tech. The “focus on the design and analysis of social media.” The lab’s head, Eric Gilbert, is an assistant professor at the School of Interactive Computing.

    @eegilbert
    Eric Gilbert    Introducing our new project with @RedCross: http://t.co/yuWfxgYT. After donating, your Twitter pic breaks apart, then rebuilds over 3 days. 3 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Apparently, When Things Fall Apart was inspired by not only the continuing effort of The Red Cross, but specifically the green Twitter pics you probably remember during the Iranian uprising in 2009.

    The most recent example of the profile-pic-changing phenomenon was of course, KONY 2012. Since the last time I checked, Joseph Kony still has not been “brought to justice,” and I don’t think that has anything to do with Jason Russell’s epic meltdown.

    But When Things Fall Apart is a lot cooler than most of these types of things, and as a prerequisite, you must donate. Hopefully, we’ll see plenty of people’s Twitter pics breaking apart and coming back together in the coming months. Don’t be surprised to see it quite a bit if another big natural disaster strikes somewhere in the near future.

    [h/t Mashable]

  • Wendy’s Snatches The Golden Tweet Award

    Twitter’s annual Year In Review rolled out in stages this year, first giving us the year in Twitter stories and following that up with stats about the new additions to the Twitter community as well as top hashtags, topics, and tweets per second records.

    This last (so far) leg of the Year In Review is the Golden Tweet Award, which is awarded to a tweet that was not only the most retweeted, but also had an impact in terms of social good.

    The award goes to a tweet from Wendy’s, which asked users to retweet for a good cause. Each retweet sent 50 cents to the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. It looks like helping foster kids is a great motivation to get people to retweet, because the tweet helped raise $50,000 for the charity. By my math, that’s at least 100,000 retweets.

    @Wendys
    Wendy’s    RT for a good cause. Each retweet sends 50¢ to help kids in foster care. #TreatItFwd 176 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    Wendy’s acknowledged their award accordingly:

    @Wendys
    Wendy’s    It’s an honor to have the most re-tweeted post of the year! Thanks everyone who helped a great cause! http://t.co/CRkiMFXX 19 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    The promotion is not just a Twitter thing, it is actually part of an annual Father’s Day initiative by Wendy’s. This year, including the retweet contributions, they raised $1.8 million for Dave’s charity.

    Although this year’s most retweeted tweet did more to help children, it’s definitely not as funny as last year’s top tweet. That honor went to Stephen Colbert with this oil-spill themed gem:

    @StephenAtHome
    Stephen Colbert    in honor of oil-soaked birds, ‘tweets’ are now ‘gurgles. http://bit.ly/cIhZNf 540 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    Did you see Wendy’s Golden tweet out there in the Twitterverse? Did you retweet it? Let us know in the comments.

  • Snooze For Charity With This New iPhone App

    Call this the digital swear jar.

    The people over at the LetGive organization want to use technology to help people dontate to charity. One of their stated goals is to “empower users of mobile applications to do good simply by using their mobile applications.”

    Their first crack at an app to achieve this goal is called “Snooze.”

    The free app for iOS functions as a basic alarm clock, but with a twist. The app allows you to set it up so that every time you hit the snooze button, you pledge 25 cents to a non-profit organization.

    The app keeps track of every time you hit the snooze button and twice a month users will have the opportunity to donate the total amount to one of the non-profits in the LetGive network. This network currently consists of about 11 organizations, including the Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism Association, The Nature Conservancy, Music for Tomorrow and City Harvest.

    This week, I could have already given about 5 dollars.

    A couple of weeks ago they announced a “Hack For Good” contest on their blog. It will take place during September:

    LetGive has created an API that allows anyone to include a charitable giving component within their application. Applications built on our platform are transformed into powerful fundraising vehicles for Nonprofits and Charities.

    The first application built on the platform is an alarm clock that resides on your iPhone. When you hit the Snooze button, a donation is triggered to the charity of your choice.

    Any type of application (game, newsreader, calendar, alarm clock, mail reader, map/location based, Twitter/Facebook client) can be turned into a giving application.

    Of course, this app isn’t going to rack in gigantic sums of money for the non-profits. But every little bit counts, and apps like this can make donating to charity a more everyday, passive experience – you don’t even have to think about donating, you just do it. In the future, the expansion of this concept could lead to more apps that could rake in even larger charitable donations.

    What do you think of the idea? Let us know in the comments.

  • London Riot Victim Gets Social Media Help To Fix Destroyed Barbershop

    Social media has been an integral part of the riots in England, both for good and for bad. Though many blame quick, wide-scale communication for mobilizing and then prolonging the riots, social media has also been a tool for good.

    For instance, a few days ago Londoners took to Twitter to help orchestrate a giant cleanup operation. Using the @RiotCleanup Twitter account and #riotcleanup hashtag, activists mobilized thousands to take to the streets to aid in the restoration.

    One story in particular caught the attention of the internet. An 89-year old barber named Aaron Biber had his barbershop destroyed by rioters. They smashed windows, stole various items and left the inside in a state of disarray. The photo above caught fire online, even appearing on the front page of Reddit a couple days ago under the heading “He’s 89 and just discovered that his barbershop was totally destroyed by London Riots.” That post received 1271 upvotes and over 600 comments.

    Mr. Biber’s story was also picked up by various news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal.

    Interns at a London advertising agency called BBH decided to take up his cause. Mr. Biber said that he would likely have to shut down his shop because he doesn’t have insurance and can’t afford all the repairs. So the interns decided to raise the money for him through the internet.

    They created a blog called Keep Aaron Cutting. Here’s what they say about the project –

    Aaron has been in the Tottenham area for 41 years and at 89 is devastated by the damage to his livelihood.

    Let’s use the internet, spread this and all donate a couple of quid so Aaron can get his shop back up and running so he will not have to worry how he’s going to make a living at his old age.

    They are asking that people use social media to spread the story, in hopes that they can raise enough money to clean up his shop. currently, over 8,500 people have shared the blog page via Twitter and over 11,200 have shared it to Facebook. People are spreading the word using the Twitter hashtag #KeepAaronCutting.

    Here’s a short video that the BBH interns did with Mr. Biber –

    Keep Aaron Cutting from BBH Barn on Vimeo.

    This fundraising effort is the first project in the BBH intern program “The BBH Barn.” Their aim is to “expand and mix both the power advertising wields and youth’s inherent energy.”

    As of right now, the campaign has raised around 31,150 pounds, or around 50,700 American dollars. Sounds like they are well on their way to getting Aaron’s stop back up and running.

  • “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” Social Media Campaign Targets East African Poverty

    The Save The Children organization is hoping to raise both awareness and funds to help the “devastating food crisis affecting millions of children and their families across East Africa.”

    Today they announced the launch of I’m Gonna Be Your Friend, a giant fundraising campaign that looks to spread the word via social media and celebrities – and through celebrities on social media.

    The first aspect of this campaign is the accompanying video, available on YouTube. The video shows harrowing footage of struggling Africa people and is directed by Kevin MacDonald of Last King of Scotland fame. It is set to Bob Marley’s song “High Tide or Low Tide,” which includes the line “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” (where the campaign got its name). Check it out:

    The second part of the social media campaign is the Twitter and Facebook support. Universal Music Group, Yahoo!, MSN, and others have already teamed up with the social sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as partners in the project. “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” has also attracted a slew of high-profile celebrities –

    From today, many icons, celebrities and artists across the world including Eminem, Lady Gaga, Jay Z, David Beckham, U2, Beyonce, The Rolling Stones, Muhammad Ali, Jennifer Lopez, Muse, Coldplay, Elton John, Lewis Hamilton, Britney Spears, Bruno Mars, Robert Plant, Kanye West, Madonna, Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Bieber, Brian May, Sting, Rihanna and many others are launching the campaign via their huge networks of friends and fans on Facebook and Twitter (#beafriend).

    Those celebs will spread the word using their Facebook and Twitter followings. Save The Children estimates a global reach of over 700 million fans.

    @AnnieLennox
    Annie Lennox    #EastAfrica @Bobmarley @SavetheChildren Appeal. RT, Download and Donate. Children urgently need your help. #beafriend http://t.co/Dsl1hX5 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @enrique305
    Enrique Iglesias    Enrique supports @bobmarley‘s @savethechildren campaign to help fight hunger in East Africa. #beafriend … http://say.ly/RuuzEJ 7 hours ago via WhoSay · powered by @socialditto

    @coldplay
    Coldplay    #EastAfrica @Bobmarley @SavetheChildren Appeal. RT, Download and Donate. Children urgently need your help. #beafriend http://t.co/rWJIDDz 5 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    Cristiano RonaldoI’ve just been informed of this campaign to put an end to Millions of children starvation – Save The Children has launched an emergency aid response in Africa – Please watch this video, share with friends and download Bob Marley & The Wailer’s single ‘High Tide or Low Tide’ with all proceeds going to the East Africa food crisis appeal. You can and help now.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTJVQKra7gA&feature=share 7 hours ago · 20,260 likes · 2,556 comments

    People can donate to the cause either by purchasing the Bob Marley track from iTunes or by donating directly from the “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” site. Also, people can help by simply spreading the word on Facebook and Twitter. They ask they Twitter chatter contain the hashtag #beafriend.

    Save The Children says that drought in north east Kenya and Somalia has led to a massive food crisis.

      Families have lost their crops, livestock, and their food supplies – up to 60% of cattle have died in some areas. Food and water prices have soared.
      Families are struggling to get even one meal a day.
      Thousands of children across the region face starvation. And those who survive can be damaged for life by lack of food when they’re little.
      Thousands of families, including around 70,000 children, have been forced to flee the drought-stricken homes to survive, with many joining overcrowded refugee camps.


    Spread the word, help out. Social media for social good is something we can all get behind.

  • Kawasaki Disease Diagnosed Via Facebook, Saves Young Boy’s Life

    Here’s one from the social media is awesome file:

    Next time you think you are oversharing on social media, remember that all those pictures and updates you post are being read by hundreds of people – some of who might know something that you don’t know.

    That’s what happened for Deborah Kogan. And she explains her story in a piece for Slate.com called “How Facebook Saved My Son’s Life.”

    I know, that title seems a tad dramatic, but it really is the case that without Facebook, the story could have ended much differently.

    On Mother’s Day, Kogan awoke to find her son Leo had a fever and a mild rash. Like any concerned mother she took him to a urgent care center that was open on Sunday. The rapid strep test came back negative, but it sometimes does with children. The doctor decided to treat Leo for strep anyways.

    Armed with Amoxicillin, Kogan felt pretty at ease.

    The next morrning her son’s condition had deteriorated. Not only did he have rashes, but he was also swollen. She posted a picture of Leo on the doctor’s exam table on Facebook. “Baby getting sicker, Eyes swollen shut. Fever rising. Might be scarlet fever.”

    The next morning, his condition was even worse and Kogan was beginning to become extremely worried. She took a bunch of pictures with her iPhone and posted one to Facebook. It was the one that was the least dramatic, as she didn’t want to frighten her Facebook friends. She sent the rest to her family physician. Here’s that photo, courtesy of Kogan and Slate –

    Just minutes later she was receiving calls and direct messages from people who had seen the photo on Facebook. Kogan’s former neighbor, her pediatrician friend and her pediatric oncologist cousin all suggested a strange diagnosis: Kawasaki Disease.

    According to the PubMed government database, Kawasaki disease is a rare and not very well understood condition. From the database –

    Kawasaki disease occurs most frequently in Japan, where the disease was first discovered. In the United States, after congenital heart defects, Kawasaki disease is the leading cause of heart disease in children. Most of these patients are younger than age 5. The disease occurs more often in boys than in girls.

    Kawasaki disease is a poorly understood illness. The cause has not been determined. It may be an autoimmune disorder. The disorder affects the mucus membranes, lymph nodes, walls of the blood vessels, and the heart.

    Kawasaki disease can cause inflammation of blood vessels in the arteries, especially the coronary arteries. This inflammation can lead to aneurysms. An aneurysm can lead to a heart attack, even in young children, although this is rare.

    It’s symptoms include swelling, rashes and redness, bloodshot eyes, vomiting, diarrhea, joint pain and many more.

    Kogan decided to act on this Facebook-diagnosis even though it was an odd experience filling out the paperwork. From her story –

    I called my family doctor and told him I was heading to the hospital. “I just have a Spidey sense,” I said, “that he’s really sick.” Not a lie, but not the whole truth, either, though what was I going to say? Three of my Facebook friends think my kid has an extremely rare childhood auto-immune disorder which I just read about on Wikipedia, and since they all contacted me after I posted a photo of him on my wall, I’m going? It seemed … wrong! Reactionary. And yet as much as I wanted to be my usual mellow self, the immediacy of the Facebook feedback was enough to push me out the door.

    It turned out to be the right call, as her son was treated for the disease and subsequent liver disease triggered by the condition. He is still recovering from that.

    One lesson that Kogan took from all of this – Facebook’s ability to “profoundly connect” people was a lifesaver. Not only in diagnosing the illness, but keeping her connected during the long nights in the cold setting of the hospital.

    Do you think that social media is leaving the world a cold, desolate place void of any human interaction? For Deborah Kogan, at least, it was a lifesaver.

  • Reddit Users Help Save Man’s Wedding

    Reddit Users Help Save Man’s Wedding

    Who said the interwebs were only for trolling, stalking and porn?

    The Reddit community has rallied around one of their own and helped him make this best of a bad situation. About a month ago a Reddit user, BigPapiC-Dog, posted a plea for help on AskReddit. His wedding was fast approaching and he had just received the devastating news that he had lost his venue. I can’t even imagine the freakout that occurred when he told his fiance the news – *shudder*.

    BigPapiC-Dog demonstrated to the Reddit community that all the cards were stacked against him. At three weeks away, finding a new venue was going to be tough. June is a popular month for weddings, so that was going to make it near impossible to find a new one on short notice. He couldn’t just move the thing to a later date because friends and family had already gotten plane tickets and both bride and groom had gotten off work for their honeymoon.

    Plus they needed a private residence in order to make use of the $1,500 worth of booze they had already purchased for the reception.

    So BigPapiC first asked if he could have his wedding at someone’s house. “We will clean up after ourselves,” he said.

    Over 1000 comments poured in, some offering up their places for the unlucky couple and many giving suggestions on how to “make their own venue” per say – and how to make it work. Users suggested ideas for the wedding, reception and everything in between. It would up that the best idea involved having the entire thing in a huge field. They apparently decided on his wife’s uncle’s farm. Suggestions for that included everything from bounce tents to a bamboo mat dance floor.

    Before the wedding, he updated the post with this thank you to the Redditors –

    Over 800 redditors have commented and made terrific suggestions or just wished me well. This is why I come here. Just as I start to lose faith in humanity (I am not saying that this one event shook my faith in other people, it’s a generalization), you people all remind me of how good other human beings can be to each other without any sort of motive or incentive (except comment karma?). Thanks so much to everyone for your suggestions and kind words. I again promise to post pictures of the special day, and update with something more than “it went okay”

    And just a few hours ago, BigPapiC posted an update about his wedding to the Redditors.

    Fucking AWESOME. I can’t even say “it went okay” as a joke. It was epic. We took the “have it in a field” idea, and really ran with it. After three solid weeks of work cleaning and prepping, my wife’s uncle’s farm was ready for action. It is a big property, and he has horses, cows, pigs and goats. We cleared out a cow pasture for parking and set up a tent by the stables. The stables were filled with his best horses (Pasofinos for those who care) and one of the stalls had some week-and-a-half old puppies that were just born. We moved the wedding from 6 to 7, and the weather was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky, and the breeze started up about 30 minutes before the ceremony.

    And he made good on his word, posting pictures of what looks like it was a pretty fun event.

    Oh, internets – just when I think you have no good left in you, you go and do something like this – and totally redeem yourself. Random people pretty much became this guy’s wedding planners. And it looks like the moral of this story is that it’s not about the venue…it’s about the people. It’s about love, and (puke)….

    [Hat tip to Boing Boing]

  • LikeMinded Launched by Craigslist Foundations

    Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, has just announced a new site called LikeMinded.  The site will attempt to serve as an aggregate source for community involvement and local action.  People can use the service to share stories of successful community projects and also as a place to find resources for getting their own project off the ground.

    @craignewmark
    craignewmark    ideas for local change? @craigslist_fndn launched #LikeMinded today so
    you can share them. @lkmnd http://bit.ly/lkmnd1 22 hours ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    According to the site, here’s how you can use it:

    Discovery

    In LikeMinded Beta, you can discover two kinds of information about local issues you care about:

    Resources: Resources are articles, videos, tools, and audio from around the web related to local community change. It’s information in its original form, available free from the source.

    Projects: Projects are the story behind community change. What issue was addressed, how did the team do it, and did it work? Projects include visibility for the people and organizations who did the hard work and info about where and when it all happened. They are a great way to get a snapshot into how people addressed issues in their neighborhood.

    You can discover information through the topics on our homepage, and you can explore more deeply at our full search page.

    Sharing
    Individuals and organizations are sharing local community stories through LikeMinded. The real magic comes when you share your story. What have you or your organization taken on? What cool projects have you read about? Help inspire others by sharing what you know as resources or projects.

    The beta site allows users to search or share stories and resources in a variety of topics including health, education, safety, literacy and technology.  Once within a category, you can learn about specific initiatives either completed or still in progress – for example, “Book Drive to promote literacy in San Francisco.”  Each initiative’s page hold information about affiliated networks of sponsors, methodology and resources.

    “We should all live in great communities: strong, healthy, democratic, sustainable, collaborative places. We built LikeMinded to make that happen.  People are doing incredible things to strengthen their local communities. Too often, they don’t get credit for their amazing work. As importantly, people in other communities don’t learn from one another’s successes often enough.”

    Last month, Craig Newmark launched craigconnects, a web platform that attempts to connect people through information and resources in certain “social good” areas like volunteering and community building.

  • Can Groupon Remain the Daily Deals Leader?

    Not too long ago, Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare each had their turns as the new hot startup. While all these platforms are very popular and are continuing to grow, the social spotlight has expanded to a new area called “daily deals.” These deals have absolutely taken the world by storm over the past several months.

    Although there are many players in the space and more rising daily, Groupon has emerged as the leader. While there are many reasons for Groupon’s popularity, Patty Huber, the company’s leader of social innovation, offered an interesting perspective on its rapid growth.

    “We really cut above the clutter of all the options that people have and give the perfect excuse to try their cities with the great deal,” she said.

    Interestingly, Groupon began as a collective buying platform called The Point. It developed from there into a service that presents consumers with daily offers. Because it only wants to give users the very best deals, Groupon reaches out to businesses that it believes would be engaging and appealing to subscribers.

    “We only want to feature the best things to do, just like we only want to feature the best causes to do,” said Huber.

    Even with the service’s vast popularity, most people don’t know that Groupon also works with local charities and non-profits to promote social good. According to Huber, the company tries to create opportunities for subscribers to take action. For example, users visit the site for the “daily deal,” and while there, Groupon promotes a complimentary social cause and encourages them to donate money, volunteer their time, participate in a local event, and more.

    Because the couponing space is still in the very early stages, there are almost as many challenges as there are opportunities for Groupon and the other players. For starters, will the craze last? Secondly, in addition to the competition, there are also websites rising up that allow users to sell their “daily deals” before they expire. Since these challenges will only continue to grow, what will come of these couponing sites?

    As the leader in the “daily deals” space, Groupon plans to further develop its platform for both businesses and users. As Huber explained, the company will launch more deals in more cities and will enhance its personalization process to better meet user needs.

    Based on a recent report from Local Offer Network, the couponing space is projected to reach $2.66 billion this year. The report also suggested that more businesses would embrace the space and that competition would increase. With this data in mind, does Groupon have what it takes to remain the leader?