How Social Networking Can Change The World

Posted by Erdem OZKAN on 21 September, 2008

This item was filled under [ Events, Featured, General, People, Web 2.0 ]

As social networks take more time in our lives, we’re starting to feel The Internet’s physical impacts on our daily lives. Today, the gap between the living standarts of developed countries and undeveloped countries, continues to widen. Social networking hepls us to know about the undeveloped countries more than past. Some smart people use social bookmarking as a tool to reach the whole world to tell what people living in undeveloped countries need.

Nowadays, twitter is a very popular for social networking and also popular for social responsibility projects. This is called “Twitting For Charity”. Twitter co-founder Biz STONE has talked about this new way for charity in his September newsletter.

First example is Mashable ’s “The Well That Twitter Built” project. Mashable ’s founder and CEO Pete CASHMORE told his followers about Charity:Water, an initiative to build wells in Ethiopia.

“On September 18th 2008, Mashable’s Twitter followers donated $3536 to Charity:Water, an initiative to build wells in Ethiopia. On the same day, our Twitter friend Paul Young raised a further $637 through his Twitter and Facebook accounts. And Twitter user Sarah Townsend hauled in $400 – that’s more than $4500, almost exclusively from Twitter, in a single day. With $4000 buying an entire well to supply water to 200 people for 20 years, we can truly call this the “well that Twitter built”.” says Pete CASHMORE…
The second example is Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian, a heart surgeon using his Internet marketing business to fund heart surgery for under-privileged children having “Congenital Heart Defects” in India. In August-September every year, Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian holds a 24-hour day and night blogging marathon called Tweet-a-thon Dr. Mani has founded Children Heart Foundation which hepls children to get heart surgeon. In India, a heart surgeon is not as expensive as in US. Each operation costs between 2500 – 3000 $. He’s seeking donations and making conributions from his growing Internet business.

2500 children die every day from congenital heart defects. 1 in 4 of them lives in India. With early detection and treatment, almost all of them will be completely cured.

These two examples show us the power of The Internet via Social Networking to change the world we live. Social responsiblity must be one of the results of an adequate social network. We must thank Pete CASHMORE and Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian for showing us the way to use a social network as a tool to change the world and make better.

This post is about the power of social networking (virtual communities) to change the world and dedicated to Blog Action Day .