Social media blogger Geoff Livingston just issued his 2010′s 5 most engaging social media stories, and Haiti made the list — not only the American Red Cross text-your-donation phenomenon, but also using crowd sourcing to allow disaster victims to tell aid workers where the need is greatest.
The Red Cross, Ushahidi and other nonprofits using social media to get the word out about the Haiti earthquake and taking donations via text message. The moment-in-time togetherness of the global online community was amazing. But a great deal of the aid never made it to Haitians in need, and subsequent disasters in Chile and Pakistan were met with much less enthusiasm. This is an area where we’ve made great progress, and I can’t wait to see more.
And check out Livingston’s original post here: 5 Social Media Lessons From the Haiti Earthquake Relief Effort
He’s right. A huge step in the right direction and much, much progress to be made. Stay tuned, philanthropy/disaster/comms communities.
