Here’s an interesting story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which illustrates an interesting and unusual application of social media tools in health care and medicine:
Chris Strouth needed a kidney transplant. He’d been on dialysis for months after Berger’s disease (which he called “Harold”) wreaked havoc on his renal system. So he tweeted about it, casting a wide electronic net with a plea to anyone he was even remotely connected to online. He got an impressive 19 offers, and one match — casual acquaintance and Facebook friend Scott Pakudaitis of St. Paul, whose left kidney, “William the Conqueror,” was transplanted into Strouth in December. Both are doing well, and the rest is Facebook history.
I had a fun opportunity to be interviewed earlier this week as part of this story that ran on KTTC TV in Rochester Thursday night:
I also kind of broke my general rule about not initiating friend requests with females under 30 because Lauren Hardie, the reporter, mentioned SMUG in the story, and that she had some additional video of the interview with me on her Facebook page. So if you want to see that snippet, go see Lauren’s videos.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project came out with an updated survey today, which found that only 8 percent of Americans aged 12-17 use Twitter, and that blogging is much less popular than it was in 2006, when the survey was last conducted. Now only 14 percent said they maintained their own blogs, which is half of the 2006 figure.
I had an opportunity to discuss some of the reasons for this Wednesday, in advance of the public release, with Mary Brophy Marcus (@BrophyMarcUSAT) of USA Today, for her story related to the study.
“To quote my 15 year-old-son, ‘Twitter is lame,'” says Lee Aase, manager of social media at Mayo Clinic. He says Facebook and texting may be satisfying teen chat needs.
“They’re so into text-messaging that that niche is already sort of filled for them,” he says.
Aase also says some teenagers may grow back into blogging as they hit adulthood: “Blogging has become a way to communicate with the world, about more meaningful issues, not just about communicating to friends.”
As I see it, the big thing that has changed since 2006, causing blogging to decline, is the immense popularity of Facebook, which was still pretty new back then. And with Facebook’s chat feature, combined with text messaging, most young people already have ways to do the short message communication with people who matter to them…their friends. There really isn’t much incentive for them to go to Twitter, because most of their friends aren’t there anyway; they’re all on Facebook. Or they can be reached via SMS.
It’s different for adults; many of us actually use our cell phones primarily for voice calls instead of text. And we see Twitter as a way to make connections with people who have common interests.
What do you think? Are there other reasons why teens don’t tweet?
While social media can be used to perpetrate the con jobs, their real power is to enable those who care to give meaningfully and with confidence.
You can give to charities endorsed by people you know, or by people the people you know, know.
I know that last sentence is really awkward, but take a minute to think about it. And while you’re thinking, here’s a story that will help drive it home.
I met Tom Vanderwell (@tvanderwell) last year via Twitter, as described here. Having met on Twitter on a Sunday night, we had coffee together in his home town, which is nearly 500 miles from mine, the following Wednesday. And when I returned to Grand Rapids, MI in August for my granddaughter Evelyn’s birthday, I went to Tom’s house to interview him via Flip video for this post on our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog.
While there, I met Tom’s youngest children, Abby and Isaac, whom he and his wife had adopted from Haiti. Cheryl and their older daughter were on a mission trip in Haiti at the time I visited him, which is why I needed to meet Tom at his home: he had to be there with his adopted kids. I also learned that Tom was involved as a member of the board of the Haitian orphanage, God’s Littlest Angels.
So when I got the message pasted at the top of this post from Tom yesterday via Facebook, I took notice. It brought the disaster one step closer to me, because I knew someone actively working to provide relief. And I knew that the projects he would be supporting would be well-run, economical and wouldn’t involve a lot of administrative overhead. In short, I knew that whatever I gave would be well spent.
I’m not going to suggest what you should give. You need to decide that on your own.
But I do want to assure you that whatever you send for God’s Littlest Angels will be used well, to meet real needs.
This shows something of the power of social media, in that through Twitter Tom and I created a personal relationship that led to meeting in real life, and also to maintaining that relationship through Facebook. And you should check out this post Tom did on another blog, about how he has been using social media in the aftermath of the earthquake, and how through Twitter he got the director of the orphanage in touch with @AnnCurry of NBC, which led to the Today story embedded above.
So now I’m inviting you to join me in a “Six Degrees of Trust” experiment.
I know and trust Tom
You know me (if you’ve been reading my blog regularly) and hopefully trust my judgment.
You have your own circle of friends on Facebook, and followers on Twitter, who know and trust you.
Your friends likewise have friends and followers.
…who have friends and followers…
…who have friends and followers…
So whereas Tom had some suggested steps for us who are his friends, here’s what I’m asking you:
Give what you can to help God’s Littlest Angels. I have embedded the contribution widget at the bottom of this post.
Post the link of this post to your Facebook wall, or send it directly to selected friends on Facebook.
Send a Tweet about this effort. Here’s some suggested text you could copy and paste: Six Degrees of Trust: People you know helping orphans in #haiti #godslittlestangels http://bit.ly/4Fmtq1
I talked with Tom briefly this evening via Skype. He said the orphanage is currently over capacity, with 160 kids. Given the deaths resulting from this earthquake, it’s likely there will be dozens more children needing housing and help. I hope you’ll take a few moments now to help provide that help.
