Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and thanks for listening to tech Stuff. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Pellette and I am the tech editor here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, sitting across from me as
Speaker 1: usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland. The times they are
Speaker 1: a change in Okay, anything in particular that made you
Speaker 1: say that, just kind of a social change thing. I
Speaker 1: see what you're getting at. Chris and I decided that
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about something that the two of
Speaker 1: us are are very interested in. Um, I'm I've written
Speaker 1: about this quite a bit in the blogs, blogs dot
Speaker 1: hou stuff works dot com, and um, it's something that
Speaker 1: I continue to really be interested in. And it's the
Speaker 1: whole concept of social networking and social change, all right,
Speaker 1: because increasingly we're seeing social networking becoming an important part
Speaker 1: of uh social activities throughout the population, especially in the
Speaker 1: Western world, um, the over in Asia. It's a little
Speaker 1: harder for us to tell just because you know, we
Speaker 1: we don't have that experience, but we see a lot
Speaker 1: of people using sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or kit
Speaker 1: even that kind of stuff too, sort of a keep
Speaker 1: touch with friends, past information along make recommendations to one another,
Speaker 1: um even share links like We're starting to see social
Speaker 1: networking become just as important in a way as search engines.
Speaker 1: People are discovering content by seeing what their friends suggest.
Speaker 1: And I know this might actually surprise some people because
Speaker 1: a lot of people, for example, with Twitter, when it
Speaker 1: first came out, the question on the homepage was you know,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And people say, well, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to visit a site in which I have
Speaker 1: to read about everyone going to the bathroom and making
Speaker 1: a sandwich, finding the remote for their shoes. I am
Speaker 1: tying my shoe, taping the terrier to the wall. It
Speaker 1: gets kind of slow on the weekends. Okay, okay, But
Speaker 1: but the thing is I mean and that and when
Speaker 1: I wrote that post about Facebook light on the blogs, blogs,
Speaker 1: dot house, stuffworks, dot com. Um, you know, we got
Speaker 1: a lot of feedback for people who didn't like it
Speaker 1: because they couldn't get to their applications. They wanted to
Speaker 1: play Alexulis, they wanted to, you know, get into Farmville
Speaker 1: and they couldn't. And you can't do that on Facebook.
Speaker 1: But because Facebook Light is a stripped down version of
Speaker 1: the site where you're just getting essentially status updates. So
Speaker 1: you know, you might be thinking, well, these sites are
Speaker 1: really just for play, and a lot of people do
Speaker 1: use them for that, but um, they also enable a
Speaker 1: kind of communication in a broader form that that that
Speaker 1: also makes it possible to do things like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: organize uh, I mean even for fun, organize a flash mob,
Speaker 1: you know, and you might just want to get a
Speaker 1: group together to to do a goofy little fake pillow
Speaker 1: fight in the middle of of downtown New York or something,
Speaker 1: or or organize a tweet up and say, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm at Joe's Bar down on Fourteenth Street and have
Speaker 1: random people who happened to be in the area drop
Speaker 1: in and go, hey, you know, yeah, nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: I'm Twitter. You know this is me. But you can
Speaker 1: also utilize these same social networking tools to try and
Speaker 1: affect a change where you're trying to to either get
Speaker 1: a message across so that you're trying to to raise
Speaker 1: awareness or you're actually trying to change something specifically. And uh,
Speaker 1: we wanted to kind of talk about how people have
Speaker 1: used social networking to attempt this and whether or not
Speaker 1: it's been successful. And I would argue that in large part, uh,
Speaker 1: actually making a change has not been that successful through
Speaker 1: social networking. But that's mainly because I don't know that
Speaker 1: anyone has necessarily figured out the best way of doing it,
Speaker 1: yet everybody does it a little bit differently. Um. Last year,
Speaker 1: I wrote a blog post about Moldova because some people
Speaker 1: were trying to hold a protest and the government was, uh,
Speaker 1: let's just say not too thrilled about it, um, and
Speaker 1: then it was it was a little violent, as I remember,
Speaker 1: but you know, not like the they ran situation, which
Speaker 1: we'll mention in a moment um. But people were using
Speaker 1: their Twitter and Facebook status is to indicate where they
Speaker 1: should meet, and it's very difficult for those who are
Speaker 1: not tuned in. If the authorities are not paying attention
Speaker 1: to it, um, it's very difficult for them to figure
Speaker 1: out how hundreds of people are leaving the scene before
Speaker 1: they can get there and reassembling in another location which
Speaker 1: has been organized, you know, using these networks. And I
Speaker 1: mean it could also be done over SMS, text messaging
Speaker 1: over your phone, which is you know, that's essentially what
Speaker 1: Twitter has built on top of. But yes, you could
Speaker 1: do it on a much more UH scale down version
Speaker 1: where you just take Twitter out of the equation entirely.
Speaker 1: And in some cases that's actually a good idea because
Speaker 1: if you have left your Twitter account public, then anyone
Speaker 1: could see what you are updating UM just by following
Speaker 1: the public timeline, even if they're not following you specifically,
Speaker 1: And before long, people in charge may actually or the
Speaker 1: people who oppose whatever your position is UH could end
Speaker 1: up keeping up with you on every move you make,
Speaker 1: and because you're essentially broadcasting it, and if they're able
Speaker 1: to keep up with it, then they're able to possibly
Speaker 1: negate whatever move you want to make, and then you're
Speaker 1: back to square one. So UM. Yeah, there's some downfalls
Speaker 1: to this kind of approach of using social networking to
Speaker 1: to UM organize protests, which we really saw in Iran. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the things before we get to that, one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes this possible is UM and
Speaker 1: this is not even a Twitter adaptation. This is something
Speaker 1: that other people came up with. UH. Is the use
Speaker 1: of the hashtag UM. You might say, well, if thousands
Speaker 1: of people are posting Twitter messages. How you know, in
Speaker 1: the public timeline, how am I supposed to figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on in you know this particular situation. Well,
Speaker 1: people have taken to using hashtags, which is using the
Speaker 1: pound sign, the number sign or the octathorpe as I
Speaker 1: like to use it, um and uh, you know, establishing
Speaker 1: a particular tag so that everybody is putting that particular
Speaker 1: string of text in their Twitter messages makes it much
Speaker 1: easier to search. Yes, and most Twitter programs that I've
Speaker 1: seen lately, third third party programs allow you to track, um,
Speaker 1: those trending topics, so you can see if a lot
Speaker 1: of people are are mentioning including this tag, then it
Speaker 1: is very easy to identify what's going on with the
Speaker 1: particular so excuse me social situation and um, you can
Speaker 1: you can follow it very very easily. And another thing
Speaker 1: that people have been doing, which is one of those
Speaker 1: those gestures that you can very quickly identify as Okay,
Speaker 1: something's going on because everyone seems to be doing this,
Speaker 1: would be changing your avatar on Twitter. This became There
Speaker 1: are two instances I can think of on Twitter where
Speaker 1: this really kind of swept across the service. At least
Speaker 1: the people I follow one was the blackout in response
Speaker 1: to Australia's UM policy to filter the Internet. Now, in
Speaker 1: this case, Australia was talking about creating a law that
Speaker 1: would allow UM, the government to tell Internet service providers
Speaker 1: UM what they can and can't let through the country,
Speaker 1: and it was getting to a level of censorship and
Speaker 1: information control that a lot of people were not very
Speaker 1: comfortable with Internet service providers. They weren't very comfortable with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are private companies that are being told
Speaker 1: by the government what they can and can't do as
Speaker 1: far as their main business UM. And as a response,
Speaker 1: in order to raise awareness, UH, people began to turn
Speaker 1: their their Twitter avatars into just a black square and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, at first that just got a little bit
Speaker 1: of attention, But then some pretty high ranking as far
Speaker 1: as followers go, Twitter members began to do this, Like
Speaker 1: Stephen Fry, who has hundreds of thousands of people following him.
Speaker 1: He blacked out his avatar and then left a message
Speaker 1: about what was going on. And then you started seeing
Speaker 1: black avatars pop up all over the place, just just
Speaker 1: black boxes, and that's all that was there was to it.
Speaker 1: And then usually there'd be a link somewhere like why
Speaker 1: is my avatar like this? Read this, and it would
Speaker 1: link to an article about the situation. As a result, UM,
Speaker 1: the whole policy got a lot of attention directed toward it,
Speaker 1: and they ended up delaying that decision. UM the last
Speaker 1: night I had heard that decision actually did go through,
Speaker 1: but it went through ages after the first discussion. So
Speaker 1: it was something where the the reaction did kind of
Speaker 1: cause some change, but it was it was more of
Speaker 1: a delay than anything else. But the other case where
Speaker 1: people changed their avatar, that was very got the end
Speaker 1: up making the news. It was more than just something
Speaker 1: that happened on Twitter. Was the Iranian election and the
Speaker 1: fallout that followed it. Um. You began to see people
Speaker 1: change their avatars where they would give them all a
Speaker 1: green tent. Yes, some people would UH replace their avatar
Speaker 1: was a simple green square, as in the case of
Speaker 1: the blackout, but others were most I think most people
Speaker 1: were tainting, which is UH, which is what I saw
Speaker 1: the most frequently, and the idea and they were also
Speaker 1: going in to change their settings to the time zone
Speaker 1: where Tehran is located, which is the capital of Iran.
Speaker 1: And UM the idea would was twofold really to show
Speaker 1: support for the Iranian protesters, but also to theoretically confuse
Speaker 1: the government UH, using the hashtag and the time zone
Speaker 1: to make it appear as though UH there were more
Speaker 1: people involved than actually were, and to maybe mask the
Speaker 1: identities of those who were involved. UM. At least that
Speaker 1: was the justification that that I was reading about. And
Speaker 1: many people are still UH. I still have not changed
Speaker 1: their avatars back to their original state, even though those
Speaker 1: UH revolts were taking place last summer. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: back in the yeah, mid mid two nine, depending on
Speaker 1: people listen way way after the fact. So so, yeah,
Speaker 1: the and this was one of those things where it
Speaker 1: definitely helped raise awareness very quickly UM, and some people
Speaker 1: were using Twitter and Facebook to try and organize meet ups.
Speaker 1: But then quickly there was a message that went around saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you probably shouldn't UM published this stuff because
Speaker 1: then it just gives the information to the Iranian government,
Speaker 1: which was monitoring both Facebook and Twitter as much as
Speaker 1: it could to try and determine what protesters were up
Speaker 1: to and what their plans were so that they could
Speaker 1: have a response unit in place. UM to take care
Speaker 1: of UH, to take care of that without it getting
Speaker 1: out of control. And then and there were also reports,
Speaker 1: uh what, I don't know if they were ever substantiated,
Speaker 1: but there were reports that the Iranian government was actually
Speaker 1: publishing its own tweets as if it were they were
Speaker 1: coming from protesters, to try and spread misinformation, confused matters
Speaker 1: um to uh, to kind of take some of the
Speaker 1: steam out of the movements so that it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: as effective. And that's one of the big issues about
Speaker 1: social networking is that when it gets into something like this,
Speaker 1: when it's really highly politicized, it's hard to tell if
Speaker 1: the information you're receiving is genuine or not without it,
Speaker 1: without it linking to some other objective source that you know,
Speaker 1: for a act has got really good fact checking, really
Speaker 1: strong editorial voice. Um. Without that kind of link back
Speaker 1: to something that you can rely upon, you have to
Speaker 1: worry that maybe whatever it is you're reading isn't completely genuine.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean that's that's the case with anything
Speaker 1: you see on any social networking site, but in particular
Speaker 1: when it's talking about something like trying to make a
Speaker 1: big change. Well, um, I think speaking of change, we
Speaker 1: should talk about the social media event that's going on
Speaker 1: right now as we are recording that. Because UM, this
Speaker 1: is another particularly positive way I think that social media
Speaker 1: is maybe drawing attention to and helping organize efforts to
Speaker 1: UM help the people in Haiti. UM. Just a few
Speaker 1: days before we recorded this podcast, UM, there was a
Speaker 1: magnitude seven earthquake UM that killed thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: people and ends thousands more. Umfrastructure in Haiti is in
Speaker 1: ruins right now, and UM it's actually only a couple
Speaker 1: of days after that as we are recording this. So
Speaker 1: UM as of January, this is an amazing thing. UM.
Speaker 1: The American Red Cross was able to report that it
Speaker 1: had raised four points seven million dollars simply from people
Speaker 1: who were text messaging. And you might say, well, how
Speaker 1: are they doing that. There's a company UM called m give. UM.
Speaker 1: The president, Tony Aello, was actually talking to Lauras Adell
Speaker 1: on NPR as I was driving home yesterday and I
Speaker 1: listened to their his explanation of things. UM, this is
Speaker 1: a pretty neat deal. UM. You you get a code,
Speaker 1: a text messaging code, UM five digit number, and UM
Speaker 1: you send a short message to that number. And basically
Speaker 1: what happens is and give works with the phone company,
Speaker 1: your your cell phone provider, and the nonprofit organization in
Speaker 1: this case the American Red Cross, or there are a
Speaker 1: couple others like White Left GJN has one UM and
Speaker 1: UH once. What happens is if you send a text
Speaker 1: message to that number with the the pre organized message,
Speaker 1: they will take ten dollar donation and debit that to
Speaker 1: your cell phone account. That's that's in the case of
Speaker 1: the Red Cross one. I think White Left John's it's
Speaker 1: five dollars, but yeah, it's the same same concept, So
Speaker 1: it's whatever whatever they've agreed to. I mean, it tends
Speaker 1: to be around the five to ten dollar mark because
Speaker 1: that's that's an amount that most people are comfortable giving.
Speaker 1: UM you ask for more than then it gets a
Speaker 1: little more complex. Although the Red Cross one allows you
Speaker 1: to give up to three times using that number. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you can. You could give thirty dollars if you
Speaker 1: wanted to using that UM. So that I mean, and
Speaker 1: of course just doesn't prevent you from donating in other
Speaker 1: ways as well. It's just one of those things that
Speaker 1: makes it very very easy to react in a very
Speaker 1: timely matter without it without it taking a lot of
Speaker 1: time or effort, on your part. I know it sounds
Speaker 1: kind of callous, but I really do believe that the
Speaker 1: easier you make it to donate to a cause, the
Speaker 1: more people will donate. As soon as you start putting
Speaker 1: barriers in there where like okay, well as soon as
Speaker 1: you get home call this number, or as soon as
Speaker 1: you get home log into this website. Once you start
Speaker 1: putting that time difference in there, from the moment when
Speaker 1: someone hears about something to the moment when someone can
Speaker 1: do something about it, right, you cut down on participation. Well, well,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what Mr Riello was saying, that it's
Speaker 1: just making it very, very simple. And they had interviews
Speaker 1: with a couple of people who had been making donations.
Speaker 1: One guy they talked to um had received a message
Speaker 1: on his cell phone and said, well, you know, this
Speaker 1: is so easy. I'm just gonna reply right away and
Speaker 1: do this, and it just it was just very very simple,
Speaker 1: very very easy. The ten dollar amount, Mr Rallo said, Um,
Speaker 1: it's a very it's the same kind of thing. Ten
Speaker 1: dollars doesn't really seem like all that much, but it
Speaker 1: makes a difference for people who might not have otherwise donated.
Speaker 1: When that's I mean, because Yeah, to know, there's not
Speaker 1: is not a lot for any individual, but when when
Speaker 1: you get such an effective campaign together collectively, that does
Speaker 1: become a pretty large sum of money. Well. Kerry Houseman,
Speaker 1: who is a spokesperson for the American Red Cross, said
Speaker 1: that based on how effective this is, she expects that
Speaker 1: this is going to make real lasting change in the
Speaker 1: way that they are able to raise money in the
Speaker 1: wake of a tragedy like this, because, um, it's just
Speaker 1: so simple, yeah, that it happened. I'm hoping that this does.
Speaker 1: I hope that's the case. I hope it's not the
Speaker 1: opposite where it becomes like a unique event where people
Speaker 1: do this because it makes them feel good, and then
Speaker 1: the next time something happens they say, well, I don't
Speaker 1: need to donate to that because I donated back after
Speaker 1: the earthquake in Haiti, so why would I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't need to donate again. Hopefully that won't happen,
Speaker 1: especially because like you were saying, I mean, it makes
Speaker 1: it so much easier. Um, it removes those areas. It's
Speaker 1: not asking for a lot of money, and in many cases,
Speaker 1: this this money is you know, it's it's going to
Speaker 1: causes that are vital for people's survival. So well, um,
Speaker 1: you know there is such a thing as donor fatigue. Um.
Speaker 1: But but no, I think and and of course m
Speaker 1: give did not pop up mysteriously overnight after the the
Speaker 1: Haiti disaster, so that this is something that that has
Speaker 1: been going on for some time and this just puts
Speaker 1: it in the spotlight. But um, there there are other
Speaker 1: ways in which social media has helped. Um, having the
Speaker 1: meme spread through Facebook and having a link say, you know,
Speaker 1: it explains here's what's going on. You can donate to
Speaker 1: Care or the American Red Cross or one of many
Speaker 1: other organizations. Just click here and it takes you right
Speaker 1: to the page. It's right there in your live feed
Speaker 1: and makes it so much easier to you to identify
Speaker 1: and share with people. With Twitter, I mean Twitter really
Speaker 1: helped broadcast the whole text message thing quite a bit,
Speaker 1: because I mean, if we're just talking about text messaging,
Speaker 1: we're not really tough about social media, right. There are
Speaker 1: social networking, uh beyond networking with your immediate social circle.
Speaker 1: But there were so many people who were talking about
Speaker 1: on Twitter that it was trending then and that helped
Speaker 1: quite a bit too. I'm sure that that really gave
Speaker 1: a boost to the UM to UH submissions of of
Speaker 1: the you know, the ten dollar donations. Well, UM, actually
Speaker 1: getting back to how easy this is, but back to
Speaker 1: a point that you made earlier. UM. Caroline McCarthy Sena
Speaker 1: had has also written an article in which she was
Speaker 1: she had talked to the marketing director for Charity Navigator,
Speaker 1: which is a website UM that basically evaluates nonprofit organizations
Speaker 1: and non governmental organizations. UH, you know, based on where's
Speaker 1: the money going? UM, can you count on it actually
Speaker 1: being used to help the people in whatever situation you
Speaker 1: want to help them? And how much of it is
Speaker 1: going toward administrative costs? How how reputable is the charity? Yeah,
Speaker 1: very important questions to ask. And it's a very it's
Speaker 1: a very neat site. But the director, marketing director send
Speaker 1: Manuity UH said that four thousand bogus donation sites were
Speaker 1: set up after Hurricane Katrina. UM. And and so it's
Speaker 1: very important to make sure that where you're making your donation, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, is actually ending up where you think it
Speaker 1: is going. And it's very easy with things like you
Speaker 1: r L shorteners and you know, five digit codes that
Speaker 1: you would text message to make sure that you are
Speaker 1: getting it from a reputable source, and then you're actually
Speaker 1: making a donation at the site you think you're doing
Speaker 1: that because, uh, you know, it is very easy for
Speaker 1: a scammer to set up a site to try to
Speaker 1: fool people, and you can bet that they will do
Speaker 1: that in this case as well. On a related note,
Speaker 1: I noticed already that there are Facebook groups popping up
Speaker 1: where it's saying things like if a million people join
Speaker 1: this group, I will donate a dollar per person for
Speaker 1: twa haiti or whatever. A lot of those end up
Speaker 1: being bogus. It's just someone who's creating a group and
Speaker 1: wants to see if they can maybe actually get to
Speaker 1: a million people. Um it's those are a lot harder
Speaker 1: to to research than the charities because, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: often you don't have any real information about the people
Speaker 1: who started it. I would just recommend that maintain a
Speaker 1: healthy dose of skepticism whenever you encounter those kind of groups,
Speaker 1: especially if they want you to go to a different link,
Speaker 1: because that's a good chance that that's going to take
Speaker 1: you somewhere, whether there's some malware or a phishing scam
Speaker 1: or something like that. UM. I always hesitate to join
Speaker 1: any sort of Facebook group. Uh, mainly for that reason,
Speaker 1: I would rather look into alternatives. It's not that I
Speaker 1: don't want to help, It's that I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that my help is going to the right place
Speaker 1: and then I'm not going to suffer for helping trying
Speaker 1: to help someone else. So any group where you see like,
Speaker 1: join this group, and after we hit a million users,
Speaker 1: we get to you know, this much is gonna be donated,
Speaker 1: because honestly, why would someone put that kind of of
Speaker 1: uh of a requirement? There isn't that Isn't that really
Speaker 1: ultimately heartless to say I need a million people to
Speaker 1: join this group, and if a million people join, I'll
Speaker 1: donate this money. Why why not just donate the money now?
Speaker 1: Without a million people joining? What benefit is there to
Speaker 1: have a million people joined the group? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no reason for it. So once you start asking those questions,
Speaker 1: critical thinking is so important on the Internet, folks, and
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about things about trying to make
Speaker 1: a social change, because everyone wants the world to be
Speaker 1: a better place and we all want to feel like
Speaker 1: we've contributed to that. But let's make sure that we're
Speaker 1: really contributing to that we're not just fooling ourselves. Um,
Speaker 1: and that that kind of I don't know if you
Speaker 1: want to mention anything more before I moved on, but
Speaker 1: there was one other kind of related thing to this
Speaker 1: I was going to go off on. I was going
Speaker 1: to uh to mention that Caroline McCarthy said that if
Speaker 1: you receive an email from someone claiming that they are
Speaker 1: a victim, that's also sort of a red flag. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that you know, Hey, my my house got destroyed in
Speaker 1: this problem. It's essentially a twist on the Nigerian scam.
Speaker 1: It's really and which has been around forever. I mean
Speaker 1: that that's that was facts stuff before it was email. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention another thing that happened recently on
Speaker 1: Facebook which tries me crazy, which is the Facebook bra
Speaker 1: color deal. So if you were on Facebook and you're
Speaker 1: a guy, and you notice that all your female friends
Speaker 1: were posting colors, and you were wondering why and you
Speaker 1: never found out, um, it was it was kind of
Speaker 1: this playful way of raising awareness for breast cancer research. Um.
Speaker 1: Women were posting the color of their the bra they
Speaker 1: were wearing as their status. So you might see one
Speaker 1: that says blue or or black or white lace or
Speaker 1: something like that, and then eventually you started to put
Speaker 1: it together and you're like, oh, that's odd. And there
Speaker 1: was no explanation at the time why they were posting
Speaker 1: these colors. Now that's problem number one. If you don't
Speaker 1: explain why you're doing something, how can you raise awareness? Okay,
Speaker 1: problem no one. If you if there is no explanation,
Speaker 1: you are not raising awareness. All you're doing is being
Speaker 1: kind of flirtatious by saying, oh, look at my the
Speaker 1: color of my under things that you cannot see they
Speaker 1: are actually black and blue. Doesn't make a damn bit
Speaker 1: of difference people. Part two breast cancer we're pretty much
Speaker 1: aware of it. Turns out everyone has heard of this.
Speaker 1: Breast cancer awareness is probably a non issue. What's the
Speaker 1: What's that issue is research money and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: funding for for finding a cure, prevention, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: That's still extremely important. Not so much important about the
Speaker 1: awareness the little pink ribbon not doing as much as
Speaker 1: you think it is and donating money to services that
Speaker 1: actually are trying to cure the disease. That is where
Speaker 1: the action is needed. Uh. And this this goes for
Speaker 1: beyond the web. We actually had someone come in and
Speaker 1: talk to us about breast cancer at house stuffworks dot com. Correct,
Speaker 1: and she pointed out that the the whole pink movement
Speaker 1: is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's a great marketing pr thing
Speaker 1: where everyone's really aware of it. But it's a curse
Speaker 1: in the sense that there are a lot of companies
Speaker 1: that come out that try to take advantage of people
Speaker 1: by selling these pink items saying it's for breast cancer
Speaker 1: research and donating very little or none no money at
Speaker 1: all to actual research, and either keeping most or all
Speaker 1: of the profits for themselves. It's the same sort of
Speaker 1: thing about these little Facebook gestures. They don't ultimately do
Speaker 1: anything other than have you know, people be a little
Speaker 1: playful about what color their underwear is. Um, that's just
Speaker 1: it upsets me because the effort that people could that
Speaker 1: people are putting toward being silly and mysterious and and flirtatious,
Speaker 1: could be put towards actually doing something actionable that makes
Speaker 1: a difference. And if you leave Facebook thinking that you
Speaker 1: made a difference by posting the color of your underwear, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a disservice to the people who
Speaker 1: are actually struggling with breast cancer. You could instead do
Speaker 1: something real to help these people. So, UM, okay, I
Speaker 1: think I'm done ranting. Now, Okay, that was obviously something
Speaker 1: I feel strongly about. Apparently I'm going to take a
Speaker 1: breath about pie and now I wanted to mention also
Speaker 1: Anonymous Anonymous which has used social networking to get its
Speaker 1: own message across UH, mostly through YouTube, which is in
Speaker 1: a way a kind of social networking site, not quite
Speaker 1: the same as Twitter and Facebook, but they've also used
Speaker 1: other social networking to arrange meetings to do things like protests. Scientology, Um,
Speaker 1: the Church of Scientology is practices, I should say, not
Speaker 1: the religion itself. That's what they try and make clear anyway,
Speaker 1: and there their videos, but they also tend to use
Speaker 1: wikis a lot, which is kind of outside of social networking,
Speaker 1: but they use a combination of those things in order
Speaker 1: to organize and UH and take action UM as they
Speaker 1: see fit. So social networking we are starting to see
Speaker 1: it play a larger role within trying to make a
Speaker 1: difference in the world. UH. And in some cases, like
Speaker 1: when we were talking about Haiti. It's helping, but it's
Speaker 1: mostly in that case directing action toward a different link
Speaker 1: or a different method to to donate money or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: we're not really seeing it to the point yet where
Speaker 1: social networking itself is making the huge change. But I
Speaker 1: think that's gonna you know them. I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if by the end of this year, two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: if we didn't see an incident that was was greatly
Speaker 1: impacted and possibly dependent upon social networking. Perhaps it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a shutter to think what kinds of
Speaker 1: events because it seems like good or bad. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems it seems like a lot of these are the
Speaker 1: ones that we've talked about have their roots in some
Speaker 1: you know, event that is very very serious at nature.
Speaker 1: So hopeful see something really positive. And I mean that's
Speaker 1: the thing is that, Yes, so the event is probably
Speaker 1: very serious in nature, but the response to the event
Speaker 1: is often very inspiring. Um. So I mean I would hate,
Speaker 1: I hate to see that a tragic event to come
Speaker 1: a necessity in order before you see an inspiring response.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, I agree with you there, but I'm
Speaker 1: thankful that there are people who still respond with such
Speaker 1: uh compassion and speed to these events that actually is
Speaker 1: very encouraging for someone who you know. As they get older,
Speaker 1: it gets a little more cynical. I had proven wrong
Speaker 1: once in a while, I had, you hadn't. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if any of you have noticed, you can write me,
Speaker 1: Actually you'll write both of us. The email address is
Speaker 1: tech stuff at house stuff works dot com. We'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again, possibly through social networking really soon. For
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