10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media

By Max Gladwell

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media.

They'll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They'll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they'll take for granted that a black man is or was president of the United States.

What's most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.

For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list.

Please note this is not a Top 10 list, nor are these in any particular order. It's also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation. If you'd like to take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates "opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms" through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API.

The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize. The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action.

"People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak -- all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs." You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning ... which now boasts more than 1 million individual social networks.

2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it's certain to be a fixture.

From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it's become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action.