Social media for social good
My fundamental gripe with a lot of social media buzz these days is that most of the services that are all the rage are nothing more than entertainment and marketing 
channels. Here’s the basic trend — they all start out simple and stupid, but eventually the popular ones grow into real businesses and start monetizing the rich conversations and user profiles for advertising purposes. The users continue to get entertained and distracted by creating, sharing, commenting, liking, re-tweeting, checking-in, etc. for free and the services attract more ad dollars by waving the carrot of targeted ads. Assuming consumers understand the value exchange (and have adequate control), it’s usually a win-win situation and everyone goes home happy. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. I understand the tremendous economic value, but what about the social value of social media?
Some will argue that most social media platforms are like any other technology or service that can be used for purposes ranging from good, bad to absolutely pointless. Further, there are several real examples of good emerging from all this web 2.0 communication between individuals. Social media is having a positive impact on philanthropy and the nonprofit world and has also proved to be a crucial communication tool in times of political unrest and for disaster management. Further, social media obviously helps broaden our social circles and helps us strengthen existing relationships and establish new ones. I wholeheartedly agree that this could all be good for us in the long run.
So what am I complaining about? I’m not complaining actually, but trying to point out that all this good is really a side benefit of these services and not the core reason why people check their Facebook page every five minutes and tweet 
several times a day. It’s unfortunately pretty obvious that a lot of time spent using such services tends to be fairly pointless and driven largely by the need to be distracted and entertained. Again, that’s perfectly fine in terms of one’s selfish pursuit of happiness. Moreover, everyone else is doing it. But what if you could actually choose a better alternative a few times a day? What if you could actually be distracted (even entertained) by social media and do some good in the world while you’re at it? What if you could harness your free time to make a difference, instead of staring at your iPhone and desperately searching for something witty to say in 140 characters?
Luckily, you don’t have to wonder anymore. Here’s a great article that talks about the following 5 social apps that can save the world!
