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The year that was: Significant events in 2009 that defined social media in the public interest
From the 350M active users on Facebook to the 75M active players for Zynga’s social game FarmVille — social media platforms and applications continued to grow to new levels of adoption and to feature new kinds of innovation and functionality. But, what were the most important developments and symbolic events/milestones in the use of social media for public purposes?
We made a list of developments featuring milestones and representative events large and small. What happened in 2009 that you found important and/or representative of an important trend? And, why?
Send ideas in and we’ll do an updated list before the end of the year.
January 20th
President Barack Obama takes office and is the first President to actively use social media as a part of his domestically and international communications outreach. During the Inauguration CNN and Facebook partnered to allow Facebook users to provide live commentary on the CNN feed. During the ceremony Facebook received over 600,000 status updates and CNN.com served more than 21.3 million live video streams.
March 28th
Earthhour.org (an initiative of the WWF) mobilized an estimated 4,088 cities in 88 countries to participate in Earth Hour 2009, ten times more cities than Earth Hour 2008.The goal was asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.
April 17th
Ashton Kutcher beats CNN.com to become the first Twitter user to reach 1M followers and in turn donates 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day (April 25).
Retail giant Target invites Facebook users to choose how it gives away $3M in charitable donations. For a short time, the company let Facebook users decide how to allocate this money to a list of 10 charities.
June 13th
The Green Revolution in Iran beginning on June 13th goes global faster, wider and longer because of courageous active witnesses in Iran and dedicated organizers leveraging social media around the world.
July 1st
July 1—later postponed—was the proposed date that all of China’s new computers would be equipped with filtering software, an issue that prompted international outcry about censorship and monitoring.
October 1st – 9th
Social game company Zynga launches virtual goods to raise money for causes. Zynga’s “Sweet Seeds for Haiti” initiative in its Farmville game generates over $830,000 for nonprofits in Haiti during the first two weeks in October.
October 16th – 18th
Through the United Nations Stand Up Take Action – End Poverty Now campaign more than 173 million people participated in the largest mobilization around a single cause. Events were organized and coordinated via Facebook, Twitter and the Stand Up’s interactive web site.
November 1st
Micro-lending leader Kiva.org crosses the $100M threshold of micro-loans provided to deserving entrepreneurs in only four years. Founded in 2005, Kiva.org has provided loans to more than 239,000 entrepreneurs in over 50 countries. Upwards of 573,000 lenders have given through Kiva.org, lending over $100 million at the end of October 2009 — an increase of nearly $60 million since the same time in 2008
Posted in: News, Thinking | Tagged: china, CNN, earthour, facebook, farmville, haiti, Iran, Malaria, micro-loans, mosquitos, obama, twitter, UN, zynga
