Given that one of the focuses of this blog is to talk about people and organizations focused on social good, my friend asked me if I could also talk about his his new project and to help him spread the word. Here’s a bit of Q&A on The Jubilee Project!

Mark: So what exactly is the The Jubilee Project? What is its goal?

Jason: The ultimate goal of The Jubilee Project is to get people actively involved in supporting a cause or helping others. I see videos as a entertaining and effective way of communicating a story and inspiring others to do the same.

Mark: How do you see Jubilee impacting people?

Jason: I think the impact of The Jubilee Project is two fold: the obvious impact is on the cause or those being helped. In my first video it was Save the Children and Haiti. In other videos it may be be another cause or organization. The second group that is impacted is the people who will actually go and make these videos. I find that partaking in a project like this is really rewarding because you are doing something you normally wouldn’t for a good cause.

Mark: So why will people want to be a part of The Jubilee Project?

Jason: Because I believe that everyone has an implicit desire to help others. I’ve found that people are capable of extraordinary things and believe the possibilities are endless with this project. The Jubilee Project gives people an easy avenue to help others while having fun and making an entertaining video. In this new era of technology, a simple idea like this can cause a domino effect of good. We hope to really leverage social networking and YouTube to change the world for the better.

Awesome! For more info, get in touch with Jason, and watch his inaugural video.

In fact, the most noteworthy thing was that CBS seemed to have been unable to sell all of its commercial slots. Especially towards the end of the game, I noticed that every other commercial was for CBS’ own shows, like NCIS and CSI and whatever other acronymed series the network has. My hypothesis about a possible cause? Social media. Seems like even the big corporations with the cash on hand to buy multimillion-dollar 30-second spots have begun to realize that social media marketing may have a greater impact on market share and “mind share” than even commercials during the most-watched television broadcast ever.

Case in point: While Coca-Cola still bought their standard slots for the Super Bowl, Pepsi decided to skip its Super Bowl commercials for the first time in 23 years, and instead invest the money in social media-related marketing. Comments from Larry Woodward, president and CEO of ad agency Vigilante, were likely similar to Pepsi’s reasoning:

“As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased… in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company.”

If CBS cannot even fill up advertising slots for an event has always drawn more than 80 million viewers for ~20 years, then a shift in corporate thinking about marketing really has begun!

Source: Picture from the San Francisco Chronicle.

In a post from December, I wrote about how social media has become more than just a way for people to keep in touch and network online, how social media has become a force that can change lives and accomplish objectives by leveraging the power of millions of interconnected people.

This past week has definitely been a reminder of this power, after seeing the huge outpouring of support that came after the 7.0 earthquake that devastated Haiti. Here are a few of the things I’ve seen over the past several days that really seem to exemplify this role of social media as a powerful agent:

• It seems like aid organizations have really embraced the blogging community as a strong source of support and getting the word out. How do I know this? Take a look at these pages from Doctors Without Borders and WorldVision, which are pages dedicated to the blogging community. The organizations provide the HTML code necessary for bloggers to post up ads in place of the regular contextual advertising that these blogs usually feature, or pictures that bloggers can insert into their posts. (See the top of this post for an example.) I think the widespread provision of these blogging tools demonstrates that these aid organizations now see blogging as a mainstream and important way of spreading the word.
• Twitter has once again demonstrated itself as an essential tool in this crisis, and in multiple ways. It has served not only as  a way for those in Haiti to communicate with the outside world regarding their conditions but also as a means of disseminating information about how to donate to aid organizations. The mobilization that has come about as a result of tweeting is incredible. Aid organizations also seem to have realized the power of Twitter, and even provide pre-written messages for supporters to tweet.
• Mobile philanthropy, through texting or other mobile-based communication, has really proven its legitimacy in the earthquake’s aftermath. As for January 15th, for example, more than $10 million had been donated through texts in the U.S. alone, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Your $5 or $10 donation simply gets added to your phone bill at the end of the month, taking away much of the initial hurdle in giving (i.e. inputting your credit card number and info or getting your checkbook).

P.S. If you haven’t gotten around to supporting the relief efforts yet, please consider it! It’s definitely not too late!

Update: As of late Sunday, January 17th, the American Red Cross has collected about $22 MILLION in pledges from its text messaging program. The New York Times reports that the “NFL’s promotion of text-message donations during its weekend playoff games produced stunning results, with money ‘coming in at the rate of $500,000 an hour.’” Awesome!

Update 2: TechCrunch has just made a post on Haiti giving titled “Text Fundraising Comes of Age.”

Case in point: In a recent online article from Wired, one if its writers, Evan Ratliff, decides to try an experiment to test the power of today’s interconnected digital world. His challenge to the online masses? He would disappear from his existing life and try to vanish from August 15th to September 15th, and anybody who could find him during that period of time would receive a $5,000 prize. Ratliff explains the thinking behind this unusual story:

“The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end one life and start another… What can investigators glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real life?”

Professional detectives and random Joes were able to track Ratliff through credit card records, FedEx tracking numbers, IP addresses, Twitter accounts, although Ratliff also had his own defenses, both traditional and high-tech. What was the result? Click here for the result of this digital Where’s Waldo, where people leverage social media’s ability for information discovery.

And a heartwarming example for the  holiday season: A baby girl abandoned on the doorstep of a townhouse in Fairfax, Virginia some twenty years ago just reconnected with her then-15-year-old rescuers to give them her thanks. As the Washington Post explains, the abandoned girl, now a junior in college, began looking for her rescuers when she was in high school, but given that there are so many repetitions of the same name, she was unable to figure out which one to message about her thanks. One day, she finds that one rescuer (Chris) is a Facebook friend of another rescuer’s (Emily), and then she knew. Chris’ response summarized the ending well: “It’s the best Christmas present I have ever gotten.” Awesome!

Edit: A friend from Google, Bing Chen, just sent me a link about a recent United Nations report on the role of information and social networks in emergencies and conflicts. Great read.

Anyways, this friend wrote about the “6 Weird Things About Me” post she had made in February 2007 and has tagged me to do the same, so here goes! My latent inner high-schooler reveals itself.

I hate brake dust with a passion. You know, that coating of black gunk that builds up on the wheels of your car after a while? Yeah, that stuff drives me NUTS. There’s something I love about a car with nice shiny wheels and glossy black tires, even if we ain’t talkin’ ’bout SS’s on 26s. (Name that song).

People say I dress like an old man. While my standard fare is jeans/chinos with a polo, my penchant for seersucker,  tweed, bowties, etc. strikes some as a bit quaint. However, I counter by citing the example of Indiana Jones. Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp also support my case: “Yet there is a growing trend for all things grandfatherly that has been embraced by clothes-purchasing twenty- and thirtysomethings, not to mention style gurus such as Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.”