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This morning I woke up to drive in rush hour traffic, almost not even aware of what day it was, when I saw a flag at half mast. As I looked at my phone to see the time, I realized it was Friday, September 11.

Quickly, my mind turned to that day, eight years ago. I was at my college, waiting for the doors to open outside of the Journalism lecture hall. As usual, there were televisions broadcasting news everywhere in the Journalism building, and I barely paid attention to them as I was usually catching up on last minute reading before class.

As the doors opened, and I entered class, there was the giant screen, with the image of the second plane crashing into the Twin Towers.

It was dead silent and I was in complete shock.

Like me, many Americans remember exactly where they were that day, what they were wearing, who they were with – and social media is giving all of us a chance to share our memories, accounts of lost loved ones and experiences that happened eight years ago today.

On Twitter (), numerous hashtags are being used to remember 9/11. I encourage all of us to remember, share and join together in remembering those who lost their lives, and those (like many of us who were young) that lost a big part of their innocence that day. Here are some of the most popular hastags of the day:

#whereiwas is being used to share accounts of where tweeters were when the attacks occured

#remember911 is a tag for sharing memories, opinions, sentiments and general feelings

#neverforget is being used to remember those who lost their lives on that fateful day.

Tagged as: 9/11, rememberance, social media, twitter

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Canadians are now combining politics and Twitter. A new website called TweetCommons, has been launched to connect Canadians with elected government representatives via Twitter.

Facilitating more multi-directional relationships between people and government,TweetCommons is is another important tool in breaking down the walls between governments and the people they represent – and is a perfect example of how social media is enabling the process.

Online participatory media practices like TweetCommons helps produce citizen-powered dialogue that includes, but is not driven by government officials, or the select spokespeople working for big media outlets.

TweetCommons is helpful tool for all Canadians. Besides being an entry point to contact government, it is a pathway for people to join in on conversations, chime in on issues important to them and to have their voice heard.

http://www.tweetcommons.com/

Tagged as: Canada, Digital Activism, Government, Online Engagement, TweetCommons, twitter

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An Israel university student is using the popular social networking service, Twitter, to help people Tweet God.

Alon Nir, a resident of Tel Aviv, takes the prayers which are sent via direct link on Nir’s Twitter site, prints them out and drives to Jerusalem to put them into the crevices of the Western Wall. The Western Wall is a Jewish holy site that faithful believe provides a direct line to the Almighty.

Nir promises to deliver the prayers — each no longer than a tweet’s maximum 140 characters — on a regular basis.

Tagged as: Digital Activism, social marketing, social media, social networks, twitter

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Do Good
This awesome ipod/iphone app unites millions of users to do one random act of kindness a day.

The application is appropriately called “DoGood”. Each day the application displays the same “DoGood” to every user on a particular day. Once you’ve completed the DoGood, simply press done.

Social Media Integration
Facebook and Twitter integration allows you to easily tell your friends about each day’s DoGood. You can leave a story on each DoGood, or read the stories of others.

Tracking Social Change
DoGood collects statistics from the group anonymously, and presents them on a graphical dashboard allowing you to easily track each day’s activity. Moreover, you can view past DoGoods and their respective stories.

Join the movement:
http://mobil33t.com/dogood

Tagged as: behavior change, cause, cause creative, Digital Activism, Facebook, healthy people, Healthy Places, public health, social marketing, social media, social networks, twitter

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Katie Reider was a singer/songwriter from Cincinnati, Ohio. She passed away from a rare tumor in July, 2008, leaving her partner and their two sons struggling with medical bills and broken hearts.

This past weekend, thousands of former fans across the country pulled together to show their support in what is being called “The World’s Largest Tweet-Up.”

According to Tweets raise money for Reider family from Cincinnati.com:

The online effort, called The World’s Largest Tweet-Up, generated $1 per tweet from a local donor who wishes to remain anonymous. On Monday, that donation was upped to $3 per tweet.

The money goes into a fund for her family.

The Tweet-Up campaign has been extended to the end of Tuesday , said Raymond Buse III, one of the organizers. The goal is to raise $5,000 for the family, he said.

Social media makes it easy to promote a message or offer support for a cause. It takes only a matter of moments to tweet, and yet the gesture can be significant. In this case, not only is there the opportunity for more people to learn about Katie and her music, but also to help her family through the donations coming in. Lower the barriers for people to help promote or support you, and you will be amazed at the results.

If you wish to know more about Katie Reider and her life, you can also visit 500Kin265.org, a website established in May, 2008 to help share Katie’s story and music even after the tumor robbed her of her singing voice. If you tweet, please take a moment to visit http://tweetup.spotlets.com and tweet your support for Katie and her family.

Tagged as: awareness, Digital Activism, fundraising, social media, twitter

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Mark Marosits, Maureen Cronin, Tonya Peters and I are at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco this week. Unable to attend in person?

Tonya (@TonyaPeters) and I (@AndreaWorldways) will be sharing our thoughts on Twitter, or you can get a sense of all the conversations going on by checking out all tweets that have been tagged with “09ntc”.

Tagged as: conferences, nten, twitter

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“For one person to have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network signifies the turning of the tide from traditional news outlets to social media outlets … we become the source of the news – Ashton Kutcher.”

The Ashton Kutcher Twitter Challenge with CNN shows me how ONE person can use their fame to influence others’ behavior (and promote a good cause). Regardless if I believe that Ashton is funny, or a good actor, or someone that I care to follow on Twitter (@tonyapeters) … I absolutely take the side of a celebrity, political figure, or other person with high visibility that is willing to take a risk, raise awareness, and call people to the table to stand up for something that can make a difference in the world. It is only a sidebar that Ashton is donating 10,000 bed nets to www.malarianomore.org – it is more about the call to action of exercising our voice. Could this be a replacement for burning bras and peacefully marching down the street to influence change? Again, “we become the source of the news.”

Tagged as: ashton kutcher, Bed Net, CNN, Malaria, social media, twitter

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Today I came across a blog post entitled Social Media Caveats from a Dinosaur by Sung Kim, a healthcare recruiter. His stance is that social media works well for shilling products, but it doesn’t work well for services.

I see a disproportionate amount of product-related ads on Facebook but not so many service ones and there’s a reason for that. The service industry was and always will be based on human-to-human “live” transactional relationships.

…

At the end of the day, when you treat clients (and candidates alike) with respect, with personal attention, and offer them value in your offering, your business will grow and those folks will keep coming back because of trust.

Sadly, Kim seems to have missed a fundamental aspect of social media – the ’social’ part. For one thing, having an ad on a social network is no more ‘using social media’ than having an ad in a magazine is ‘being a publishing house’. Social media is more about people using technology to communicate* than about the technology itself.

Contrasting using the phone to engage with clients versus advertising somewhere is an unfair comparison: Kim would be better off to compare the effectiveness of advertising in a magazine vs on a social network, or using the phone to engage with people vs using a direct messaging system. Social media doesn’t prevent people from offering good customer service, if anything it may offer more opportunities for both clients and organizations.

Comcast has figured out a way to leverage the power of technology to offer better customer service through their strong presence on Twitter. When people “tweet” about comcast, their Director of Digital Care Frank Eliason reaches out to them to work things out from his account, @comcastcares. This is a level of customer service and support that never would have existed before-people have always chatted to friends and neighbors about products and services, and social media makes it possible to “eavesdrop” on these conversations and engage with existing or potential clients. Rather than forcing a potential client to pick up the phone and reach out to you, you can offer them service directly, lowering any barriers to starting an engagement.

Social media is never going to replace one-to-one communication; if anything, it facilitates engagement and gives us more opportunity in our everyday interactions.

*note: this is a phrase I will utter at least once per blog post, guaranteed.

Tagged as: customer service, social networks, twitter

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