Purpose believes that solutions to crises of the 21^st century require global policy shifts and tremendous consumer change. By mobilizing movements of people, online and off, Purpose is helping the green and social economy, as well as major brands, impact global problems.

The creators of Purpose, Jeremy Heimans and David Madden, have already experienced success in the ‘movement entrepreneurship’ world, founding the global movement Avaaz.org and the Australian political movement GetUp.org.

Avaaz, which means voice in many languages, was launched in 2007 with a mission to organize international citizens to take action on critical global issues. Whether the battle is against corruption, poverty, conflict or climate change, Avaaz’s internet model allows thousands of individuals to be forged into a collective and powerful force. Campaigning in 14 languages, with core teams on 4 continents and thousands of volunteers, Avaaz sets out to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform policy decisions. Currently Avvaz.org has over 5.5 million members.

Based in Australia, GetUp.org is an independent, community advocacy organization that facilitates Australians to get involved in key political issues and take strategic, coordinated action. With international recognition and praise, GetUp has more members than all of Australia’s political parties put together.

Purpose, based in New York, is creating “21st century movements”. Working with some of the leading players of the green and social economy, Purpose is helping movements to scale and mobilize around progressive causes.

An example of such a movement is ‘Global Zero: A World Without Nuclear Weapons’. Led by Queen Noor, Richard Branson, over 100 world leaders, and endorsed by President Obama, Global Zero’s goal is to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide. Working with Purpose, Global Zero is pushing the issue of nuclear disarmament to the top of international agendas.

I spoke with James Slezak, who leads Purpose’s work on the sustainable economy. James is motivated by the belief that for the green movement to be successful major sectors of the economy must be rebuilt:

“In the green space the goal is to shift the ways we do things, the economy. This means making less, as well as changing what we make. What is also crucial is shifting demand away from unsustainable products to sustainable ones.”

James’ key projects include building a global movement to support the deployment of electric vehicles, as well as renewable power.

James and his team launched helloelectric.org, a strategic movement to get electric cars on roads faster. This movement demonstrates to society at large that viable alternatives to fossil fuel cars are now available, and also channels enthusiasm for the necessary transition. James is concerned that if electric cars are not trusted from their initial launch they will fail, and there will be no other realistic way for countries like America to lose their oil addiction.

Purpose is dedicated to creating a consumer movement to lay the groundwork for the transition to electric cars. The initial goal is to give populations the opportunity to demonstrate their need for electric cars, so that car companies can target sales in these communities, and increase confidence of investors in the technology.

To achieve this, Purpose is having conversations with government municipalities, electric car industry groups, and working closely with Project Get Ready.  Project Get Ready, a non-profit initiative of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is working with numerous partners and technical advisers to help cities develop plug-in vehicle infrastructure and introduce electric cars.

Purpose is also talking to car rental companies and taxi services looking to transfer some of their fleet to electric cars.

This dynamic dialogue of governments, private companies, and non-profits is geared towards sharing ideas and best practices to help cities make the transition to electric cars:

“The benefit of having so many people and like minded groups working together is that you can cross pollinate ideas, to see what works and what doesn’t. Having so much experience is one place also enables you to create benchmarks.”

James explained that to combat the major environmental and economic problems the world currently faces we must rebuild the energy sector and eradicate carbon emitting power sources. Turning the roads of the world electric will be a key strategy to achieving this, and Purpose will continue to drive this movement.

As international citizens looking for a brighter future, let’s help them get the pedal to the metal.

Veterans in the mobile money field already know how services like M-PESA or FrontlineSMS: Credit have given formerly unbanked people the ability to save or transfer money and make payments directly over their mobile phones.  But it is both heartening and significant to see the State Department embracing technology in the wake of cablegate.

In fact, the article announces a $12 million (Sh960 million) Youth Innovate for Change Fund that is part of USAID Kenya’s Yes Youth Can! initiative.  The fund seeks to empower young Kenyans to begin community development, environmental and financial system strengthening projects.  In the article, Otero and Ranneberger express their vision of mobile money as a tool for empowering Kenya’s next generation of youth entrepreneurs.

Interestingly, some Kenyans are skeptical of the Youth Innovate for Change Fund.  Another article in the same paper illuminates Kenyan government fears that U.S. efforts to empower youth are truly a disguise for creating anti-government sentiments.  The article goes on to argue that many Kenyan Members of Parliament believe that Mr. Ranneberger’s visits to youth groups and encouragement to become civically active are motived by a desire to prop up new leaders.

So the Scandinavian company Rambøll, which specializes in engineering consultancy, has discovered. Inspired by Facebook, the company has created the online platform Ramlink to let employees share knowledge across subsidiaries. So reports the online technology magazine Version2.

With 9,000 employees in more than 20 countries the platform makes up a central knowledge base, through which employees can easily tap into the expertise of their colleagues and thus gain the insights necessary to complete a task.

“On the intranet every department had its own site, which made it hard to access information across the organization. As a result, Rambøll started looking in to new ways to promote internal knowledge sharing,” the magazine writes.

A big challenge in the organization was to reach people with just the right competence for a project so the system was designed to revolve around the employees, giving them each a profile to fill out and update on a regular basis – just like on Facebook.

Apart from sharing ideas, employees can use the site to find out what their colleagues are working on and, through Facebook-like status updates, search for assistance on projects.  In addition, the platform functions as a personal marketing platform where employees can promote themselves in order to be assigned a project.

With Ramlink Rambøll has brought the intranet into the social age. It shall be interesting to see how many Danish companies will realize that the traditional intranet has done its duty and follow suit.

Besides the wild beauty of antique Habana, the marvellous white-sand beaches of Cayo Largo, the static colonial touch of Trinidad and the “revolucion” spirit surrounding Cienfuegos, « el pueblo recolucionario », what strikes you when you travel in the largest island of the Caribbean is the almost total absence of the internet.

No matter where you are in Cuba -in a provincial pueblo or in Downtown Habana- looking for a decent Internet connexion is as difficult as looking for a 54 Ford in New York City.

However, if you wake up early and pull yourself together, you may find a place where they “offer” Internet access. When you’re a tourist, you can go to hotels. Not all of them have those services but some do.

Now, what happens when you find the right place and want to get started ?   Like any other usual western tourist, you want to quickly check your e-mails, send a sweet message for a friend’s birthday, update your facebook status to “Having so much fun in Cuba!” and, just in case, have a look to the details of your return flight.

Could you reasonably do that? Well, unless you have ten hours to spend there and a lot of money to lavish, you won’t be able to do that.  Connections are so slow, and the Internet costs you $8 an hour.

With no exaggeration, I’d say that you’d use a quarter of that hour to open gmail, another quarter to write and send ¾ e-mails. With the remaining half-hour, if it’s your day of luck and the connection does not crash all of a sudden, you may open the New York Times and probably read two articles before the final countdown appearing on the bottom-right corner of your screen kindly lets you know you have 59 seconds left to skim through your third article.

An hour had passed, $8 gone, and you only did what you normally do in 10 minutes. Stay calm and keep walking. You’re in Cuba.

That being said, my trip to Cuba was an amazing opportunity to compare the two systems – the Free West and The Tropical Communism- through the prism of Digital Age, Web 2.0 and Social Networks.

It is so different and so similar at the same time.

Social networks perfectly function in Cuba, only they do not happen on the Internet. The best example I can come up with relates to finding places where to stay when my friend and I would arrive in new cities. In New York City, Paris or London, you do things on the net, you book and tell your cab the address before showing the hotel receptionist your e-booking reservation. And if you want to go further, you go to some travel forums beforehand to ask for advice or ask your friends whether they know of someone able to put you up.

In Cuba, it’s different, but as efficient.

You talk to the first guy you meet on the street about the best way to find a place to stay (think of a forum on the net), and that guy send you to another person who knows somebody who has a “casa particular” (think of links that redirect you to the right person).

If the casa is free, you just stay there, if not, the owner of the casa (who you added as friend…ring a bell?) would call all his friends (think of creating an event on facebook) until someone has a free room for you (it works like craigslist).

Well, some would say you have to give those guys propinas (tips), but is the Internet connection your use from your Manhattan home free for you?

Some others would contend that the guy you ask for the room may take advantage of the situation and try to sell you postcards of the Che or fake cigars, but aren’t you all the time exposed to adds and scams on the Internet?

I know my point here is debatable, but I sincerely never had the impression that Cubans were missing a lot of things because they could not really access the Internet.

The capacity human beings have to adapt to any context is formidable. The famous example when it comes to Cuba relates to their cars: how can these guys still manage to have 70-year-old cars still function? Well, when you know that you can’t have a new one, you find a way to make the old one works…

The same applies to social networks. They make do with what they have, their tactility, smartness and resourcefulness.

Cubans are much more than poor victims of a repressive and dictatorial regime, they are some sort of pre-modernity geniuses who always find their find through resourcefulness, smartness and tactility.

When Angus Kidman first wrote his piece What the iPad will mean for the homeless, he was skeptical — as many would be. Where would the homeless charge up their iPads? Where would one get wireless? 3G would be difficult to sign up for without a permanent address.Of what use would the iPad really serve, anyways? Kidman seems to think that the iPad is just a luxury item that the wealthy will purchase because they can, but the necessity of it seems small, used only when a PC or phone are not available.

He acknowledged that technology can and has helped the homeless, referencing some organizations that donate old phones to the homeless. If given something higher end like an iPad, it may get swapped for some extra cash, Kidman believes. He concluded by stating that the homeless don’t need or can’t use more than a Nokia (which is not to be hated on; it’s the most popular phone in the world!)

Well, a couple of homeless folks have already proved him wrong. Evidently, there are some without homes who managed to get their hands on not only an iPad but also some kind of laptop or notebook. Taking a look into the lives of two homeless men in Paris, the article explores the logistics behind having an iPad but no address, and the sustainability of owning such an item. In major cities such as Paris and New York, finding Wi-Fi is not difficult. In all my years of being in New York City, I have never had trouble finding a hot spot; and when I sit in the Starbucks on the north end of Union Square, I can see that there are plenty of homeless people who also have no trouble finding some wireless hub either.

The homeless man in the article reveals he swapped an old MP3 player for a solar charger he found on Craigslist. The iPad and laptop not only keep him occupied during the day, but it allows him to keep in touch with people — never having to pay a cent for phone calls what with technologies such as Skype and Google Voice — and gives him some extra cash.

“The laptop and iPad also come in handy for other things… I often will DJ at parties off the iPad, and tend to use the laptop for working on my book from a park, or for making Skype calls; with Skype, Google Voice, and a few websites and iPad apps, I haven’t paid for international calls or texts in about six months. Google Ads brings in some money, and web work, freelance writing, and such all make enough that I’m never hungry. Without the laptop, this would not be possible.”

Of course, not every homeless person is or can be like this. But the article gives an interesting look into living a minimalist life with some luxury items.

Another interesting take is the blog of the iPad Nomad, who isn’t technically homeless but travels with his iPad, somewhat exhibiting the same concept as the tale of the Parisian homeless Apple patron.

Technology is advanced. It’s expensive and fancy and complicated at times. But I’ve seen my share of homeless youths with iPhones and Starbucks- or McDonalds-residing men with Netbooks. It’s interesting to see how technology is such a necessity to people that one would choose to own it over other items, such as a bed or a home. Can it be a sustainable tool for many? Could it bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots? Imagine Tweeting with Fred who sits on Broadway and 14th St. Or Google chatting with Stephanie in Tompkins Square. Of course, as already mentioned, this is not the majority of homeless people in our city — many are “absolutes,” not having anywhere to go at all and not having even one penny, so perhaps this is all just moot; one exceptional story of a few tech-savvy homeless guys. We’ll see.

“I have met a lot of people when they ask me how I like my iPad… It’s funny to see them react when I say I live off of it. But when people see a gadget, they’re more likely to take you as a person rather than a drug-driven grifter out for hand-outs. Odd piece of psychology I guess.”

Richard Worth, Chairman of the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) Management Board and Craig Thompson, CEO of ACEA, are recently charged with the responsibility of regenerating and rejuvenating the iconic sailing regatta to develop a larger and younger fan-base, and deliver events in technologically “up-to-date” formats.  Worth and Thompson plan to focus on using social media as a key tool in achieving their objectives.

The official America’s Cup site currently showcases links to various social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the ability to receive news as RSS feeds.  Between June and September 2010, members of “Generation Y” competed to share production techniques aimed to strengthen and refresh the look of the international sailing regatta; according to the America’s Cup, “the under 28 crowd was targeted because of its close association with extreme sports and social media.”  Throughout the 2010 regatta, fans could follow the United States’ entry, the BMW Oracle Racing team, on Facebook and Twitter, as well as every race on YouTube’s America’s Cup channel.

Regardless of the traditional roots that have created the America’s Cup into the oldest active trophy in international sport, technology is imperative to its evolution and critical to sustaining and growing its momentum.  Perhaps we could call it the wind beneath its sails?

Needless to say that it was not part of the plan for those young scandal instigators to be-first- seen on a national TV channel before-second- hitting the headlines of major newspapers all over the world.

As expected, reactions and comments around the world coming from political leaders, civil society, NGOs, bloggers and even Tsahal officials condemned the behaviors of those immature kids.

“This video finally debunks one of the most persistent Israeli myths – that ours is the only occupying army in history that does not sexually abuse the women of the occupied nation », says Israeli Editorialist Dimi Reider on his blog, Dimi’s notes. »

Besides its political taint, the reaction of the official Palestinian bodies was undoubtedly the most resourceful one.

“With the advent of easy-to-use media like YouTube, the truth is coming to light about a culture of humiliation of the Palestinians,” said a Palestinian official from Prime Minister Fayyad’s office on Tuesday, October 5^th.

Beyond the non-surprising political interpretation of the video by the Palestinian Government, what is crucial in the statement is the awareness of the impact new digital media has on today’s political realities.

The case of Israel is quite telling, as the Israeli IDF has had a long tradition of discretion and control on everything that relates to its communication. Therefore, witnessing a non-amateur army in such an uncomfortable position (to say the least) is blatant evidence of the immense power and tremendous volatility new media have today.

In fact, things seem to have changed for Tsahal, making it harder and harder for the Israeli army to control everything, as this video is not an isolated case for the IDF. In fact, this new broadcast is the third thorn the Israeli army had to deal with after two similar cases had occurred earlier this year, all three happening within a six-month period.

First, exposure of the video came just seven weeks after an Israeli soldier sparked widespread outrage by posting pictures of herself smiling and larking around next to blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners. The army denounced the pictures as “shameful,” while the Palestinian Authority described them as humiliating, but the former soldier, Eden Abergil, could not understand why the images had caused such offence.

Second, earlier last summer, the video of six soldiers breaking out into a coordinated dance routine in the middle of the street while on duty in Hebron prompted a global outcry that had destabilized Tsahal’s communication. The video was all the more shocking, as Hebron has had a sad and bloody tradition of paroxysmal violence between illegal settlers and local Palestinians.

« Israel has not yet find the weapon against this kind of threats », says Omar Barghouti, a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. No matter how many radars, anti-missile shields,F-15 and M-16 you may have, New Media is stronger than you.

Not an Isolated Case

Yet, Israel and the Palestinian territories are not the only places where new media are changing the rules of the communication/censorship  game.

YouTube was blocked in Thailand because of videos showing people stomping on photographs of the Thai King.

Turkey, on the other hand, is offended by videos that indicate that Ataturk, the founder and first president of Turkey, was homosexual. Turkey wants YouTube to block these videos not only in its own country, but also everywhere else. As YouTube refuses to do so, the site remains blocked there.

YouTube: spearhead of the revolution.

Originally aimed at socializing people through Entertainment videos (music, dance), Youtube has now become a major global actor playing a political role in each and every country.

Ironically on the same day the belly-dancing video hit the web and went viral, Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics at Youtube, came to Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs to have lunch with students, alumni, staff and faculty in the second brownbag lunch of the year sponsored by the IMAC specialization.

“Today with YouTube, you can’t get away from the camera no matter where you go,” he said.

“This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. YouTube was not created to become a public square. But as with a lot of such platforms, it’s most important role can be upsetting the power structure… The old world was a conversation between politicians and news organizations. In today’s world, there’s a whole other layer out there where you have regular people holding their leaders accountable.”

Rob Wu, founder of the networking and fundraising platform CauseVox, emphasized, “The history of advocacy and marketing goes like this: we started with face to face approaches, then it went to snail mail, then TV and radio, then email, and now we’ve rapidly moved into a society that is growing more into the online space.” He went on to talk about the prevalence of social media marketing and the use of technological innovations in this field.

“Social media marketing is very hot right now…[but] no, it’s not a fad. It’s definitely going to stick around for a long time because it’s just another channel that reaches supporters…it’s going to stay especially because the younger people – people who are 35 years and younger – are plugged into this online space and are comfortable with finding non-profits and causes through this medium.”

The goal now is to get non-profits into the same space where their supporters are. But how is this effectively done?

Taking a look at Restore NYC, a start-up that officially became operational a year and a half ago, one can see the power of a small non-profit when it takes social media, the web, technology, and innovation by the reins. Founded by three friends sitting around a dining room table one night, Restore seeks to bring holistic care to international sex trafficking survivors in NYC. Their services range from counseling to ESL to job training to legal advocacy.

Being in the heart of NYC, one of the major epicenters of digital progression, Restore knew that they had to do more than just create postcard-like fliers to hand out. Even having a website was barely enough; after all, who didn’t have a website nowadays?

“When I first started in the summer of ‘09, we only had a website and it was really poor,” stated Lance Villio, Operations Coordinator at Restore. “It wasn’t up to date in any way and even the information on it was inaccurate. Our website is supposed to be the face of Restore to a majority of the public; I felt we really needed to change it.” He mentioned that they also had a Facebook but that it was not being maintained well.

Working alongside one of Restore’s board members, Greg Wong, a partner at the marketing and branding firm the Longitude and co-founder of the social enterprise Hello Rewind, Villio made sure that the organization not only had a functioning and informative Facebook page and website, but also an active blog and Twitter account.

“For non-profits, I think it’s vital to have a Twitter page,” Villio said. “And to be consistent with it, otherwise people lose interest. For our supporters, it just keeps people in the loop…For us, it allows for us to track what we’ve done, see other organizations and what they’ve been doing…so networking, basically.”

Restore felt strongly that having an online presence wasn’t just to stay socially or digitally savvy but also to remain transparent. “Transparency is really important in any non-profit. People want to know — and we want people to know — what they’re being a part of and what they’re giving to,” added Villio.

He pushed their online presence further by encouraging video logs (or vlogs) on the website as well, allowing followers to “get real faces, and get to know what’s going on first hand.” Despite the limited resources available to the agency, Restore honed in on what it did have and what it could do.

Through these mediums, they were able to connect with people and groups they would not have likely encountered in “real life,” including videographers, photographers, magazines such as Red Rover Style and Her Journey Magazine, people in various industries such as fashion and retail, and social media gurus like Desiree Frieson, who happens to have a passion for advocating against sex trafficking.

Restore felt that it was doing well reaching its current supporters and being discovered by new fans. Their online presence was active through Twitter and Facebook and their events and projects were successful. Then the young agency decided that they needed to hold a large campaign with the goal of raising at least $50,000 to maintain the first ever safehouse for internationally trafficked women in NYC. Faced with this goal, Restore knew that Tweeting for donations was not going to cut it this time around. Fortunately, through yet another connection, they discovered CauseVox.

According to its website, CauseVox is a “brandable platform that engages…advocates, reaches more supporters, and effectively tells [the non-profit’s] story, all in a fresh, easy to use, and affordable service.” Founder Rob Wu felt strongly that small- and medium-sized organizations were “struggling with technology and how to utilize it” as well as encountering difficulties in fundraising. CauseVox tackles both issues with one platform. Because technology isn’t easy to use – “especially for smaller organizations,” said Wu – he and his friend Jeff Chang developed a supporter-based, or peer-to-peer, fundraising platform. Wu also calls it network fundraising.

Remarking about non-profits in general, Wu agrees that they are seeing the need to “latch on to the social media movement” but that this needs to go beyond just having a Twitter account under the agency’s name. While the methods Restore and other media-savvier non-profits are utilizing are “good for raising awareness, building and getting your message out there, it’s not so much a platform for fundraising.” Regardless of whether an organization is not-for-profit or for-profit, all need a flow of funding. Unfortunately, awareness-building doesn’t necessarily bring in those needed dollars.

“Yes, there is Twitter and Facebook fundraising methods,” Wu said after giving some specific examples, “but the reality is that the returns are not that high and the higher returns are seen when non-profits utilize more than that.”

CauseVox was created exactly for this purpose. It caters towards non-profits in an easy-to-use way to create support. It is completely customizable, “like having a blog,” with modules that the organization can play around with.

Non-profits often have a passionate group of supporters, and CauseVox allows for them to tap into these supporters’ networks. Restore’s campaign, titled Brick by Brick, was the perfect pilot project to demonstrate this. It ran from August 22nd to September 30th and was entirely an Internet-based campaign. A supporter could create his or her own fundraising page and blast that out to friends, families, coworkers, neighbors, etc. via mediums like Twitter, Facebook, email, text, and blogs. Those friends, families, coworkers, and neighbors then donated to that supporter’s page. So now Restore, rather than just getting the support of one person, now gets the support of that one person and his or her network.

“Brick by Brock was really effective because it gave people a voice on their own pages as well as a way to help,” Villio stated. He acknowledged the ease of use with CauseVox, criticizing only one detail. “It would have been better if there was a way to link emaill addresses in supporters’ contacts or address books rather than manually sending out the page to each person. Obviously, anything to take time off of what our supporters need to do is best.”

Wu also acknowledged that there were minor tweaks that needed to be done with CauseVox but mainly they were moving forward to building up and adding to the platform.

“The cool thing,” Wu added, “is seeing how social media is incorporated. Our next step actually is to integrate something similar to Facebook posts or blog comments. We’ll plug in the ability to leave comments on one another’s fundraising page. This allows for non-profits to extract data; see who is supporting who, what conversations are emerging, and what their constituents care about.”

On both Restore and CauseVox’s ends, they reported that there were nearly no problems throughout the process of the campaign. Wu mentioned that a “hiccup” involved may have been exporting data in terms of the platform – gleaning out email lists, for example. But other than that, both parties acknowledge that there were no hurdles and the campaign went smoothly.
In fact, Restore NYC raised nearly $130,000 from the Brick by Brick campaign, including a gift from an anonymous donor that matched dollar for dollar every new donation made during the campaign. With this money, the agency can provide two years of safe housing for sexually exploited women in NYC.

Villio expressed Restore’s gratitude for collaborating with CauseVox, saying, “[CauseVox] is going to be a very successful program. It’s genius because it allows people in their own words to describe what they are doing — people want to personally send out a message for a greater good in their own way.”

Restore is one of the many smaller non-profits that realize that handing out informational packets is not enough; even “doing” social media is not enough, but that social media and advocacy is an entire package. Through their utilization of innovative technologies such as CauseVox, coupled with the power of mass social media through networks like Twitter, blogs, and Facebook, they showed that even a young and small non-profit can be digitally relevant and change lives.

“The key to all of this is learning how to use each tool specifically,” Villio commented in regards to mediums like Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and other platforms. “They can perform so many different functions, you just have to be creative and purposeful with them.”

Exchanging ideas on education, entrepreneurship, and civil society, these 18 young representatives are learning how to use modern technology to initiate social change through podcasts and other new media tools.

The week-long training session focused on issues such as corruption, social entrepreneurship, and gender equality. According to Abdallah Yassine Boukrizia, national co-ordinator of MEPI’s Moroccan division, these are issues that directly affect Moroccans.

She told Magharebia – an online news outlet covering issues in Northern Africa – that while young people are using social networks for posting photos and chatting, they could be leveraging these skills to run high-impact awareness campaigns.

Rachid Dib, a 22-year old student who partook in the course, said, “[It] changed my view of the Internet and ways of raising awareness. Just a few days are all it takes to change people’s view of the future.”

Dib, along with this next generation of Moroccan leaders, are part of MEPI’s initiative to create vibrant partnerships with people in the Middle East and North Africa. Since 2002, MEPI has contributed more than $530 million to more than 600 projects in 17 countries and territories.

Judith Chammas, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, believes that programs like this are vital because if young people have the right tools, they can make a real difference in Moroccan society.

No other expression best applies to what happened to me while I was  reading one of this week’s class readings: Social Media Can Open Door to Philantropy’s Future, by Larry Blumenthal.

In his Op-Ed, Larry Blumenthal describes a workshop he led for staff from a variety of foundations to convince them that there were no such thing as Social Media. To him, engaging with Social media is tantamount to fostering collaboration, openness, transparency, timeliness, sharing work in progress, embracing and learning from failure. In this respect, the author believes, any person claiming that Social Media does not seem relevant to his or her work is–to say the least– totally wrong!

Little by little, Blumenthal’s arguments started to convince me…I was seduced. Actually, I believe i wanted to be convinced.

Such an easy thing:all I had to do was to  keep reading his piece to the end and say to myself “He is so right! I should not be concerned anymore with spending hours a day on facebook/twitter/flickr and youtube while studying at the same time, that is actually good for me! This is a better way to stay informed! This is a tool that can help me do what I am already doing, only more effectively”

But that couldn’t unfold this way and that is exactly what happened: It didn’t unfold this way…Just like rain brought itself to a week-end that had started with the sun, my friend Yoel’s message had to distract my attention from Blumenthal’s mess.And not in a insignificant way.

I open Yoel message. It was entitled “Reda, you’ll love that!”. Let’s have a look at the message’s body. Nothing but a link.

Ok, I click on the link. “The Top Ten Ways Workers Waste Time Online”. Funny coincidence, isn’t it?

I scroll down and discover a list of ten things allegedly making people waste time online and lose productivity, especially when they are working. All that Blulmenthal’s Social Media Improvement Thing was supposed to avoid.

The website looks really serious.After quickly scrolling down to have a general sense of what that page was all about, I started to read it from the beginning. The verdict just killed my enthusiasm:

Number 1: Social Networks – 1.24 hr/week

“Social networking has come to dominate Internet use.  Nucleus Research, an IT research firm, found that 77% of employees who have access to Facebook from work check it at least once a day.  Of course, other large and fast-growing social media sites such as Twitter also contribute to the loss in productivity.”