All the networks, homemade videos, and blogs on the Web have made it a center for socializing, not social change. But a slew of start-ups are using the tech tools and social dynamics that have become the norm online to tackle real-world problems.
Whether it's through a social network that helps a Nicaraguan woman get a loan to expand her business selling dyed rope, or a website that uses video, podcasts, and other tools to turn a social activist into an Internet celebrity with an army of active followers, a growing number of people looking to make changes in the real world are going online.
"The desire to do good in the world, to be a positive contributor, is very strong - and tools allow your network to have that positive effect much more easily. You don't have to count on the executive at United Way," said Claude Sheer, chairman of Pop!Tech, an annual conference in Camden, Maine, which this fall launched a "Social Innovation Accelerator" program to help leverage new tools for global problems. "It's user-generated charity."
The social networks that people maintain online are an ideal environment to share ideals and causes with acquaintances, friends, and peers. They also represent an opportunity to engage people to tackle problems that may seem intractable to a lone individual.
"There's this idea about closing the gap between people's desire to save the environment and their ability to do so, and there's this incredible connection that exists on the Internet that up until five years ago wasn't actually possible," said David Delcourt, a cofounder of MakeMeSustainable.com, a Cambridge start-up that provides tools and tips to help people measure and reduce their carbon footprints. "Those types of connections can be used for social good as well as just general entertainment."
MakeMeSustainable fuses some of the basic principles of social networking with environmentalism, letting users set up online profiles that calculate their carbon footprint and track their performance over time as they install more efficient appliances, turn down the thermostat, or cut down on car trips.
The website counters the feeling that small actions people take are meaningless by showing the collective impact of a user's network. Tom Facelle of New York reduced his carbon footprint 2 percent by pledging to reset his thermostat. But he can also measure his progress by looking at his network - 18 Wesleyan alums who have collectively reduced their carbon footprint by 42 tons per year - the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road each month.
GoLoco.org, another Cambridge start-up launched this year by the cofounder of the car-sharing company Zipcar, also tries to draw on social connections to create environmental change, with an online ride board that encourages friends and acquaintances to split the environmental and monetary costs of driving.
Changents.com, which launched this summer, is part social network, part who's who of doing good. It takes its cues from the celebrity buzz that has become so familiar on the Internet to create "rock stars of social and environmental change, connected with the superfans that want to get behind them," according to Changents cofounder Deron Triff of Durham, N.H.
The website highlights "Change Agents," individuals who work on causes that range from corporate responsibility to world hunger, and allows people to post calls to action, which could include something as simple as donating an old cellphone for election monitoring in Africa, to a few hours of language translation or website design.
Users can spread and measure their "ripple" by promoting different causes, nominating Change Agents, and performing actions - while feeling that they know where their money is going.
Change Agent Socheata Poeuv of New Haven, for instance, makes documentaries about the survivors of the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. People who donate cameras to her cause know they are helping her record survivor interviews; others can help fund a trip to an international film festival. Scott Harrison, a "hip humanitarian," helps raise money to drill and rehabilitate wells in Africa.
"You contribute $20; you feel you know the people drinking out of the well" that it helps create, said Triff.
Greg McHale founded cMarket, a company that helps nonprofits conduct online auctions, in 2002 and is now working on good2gether, a social Web service set to launch in Boston in March that aims to will help young people channel their impulses to volunteer by making it easier to connect with nonprofits and causes that inspire them.
They are "the first truly digital generation - when you start looking at them and how they care about causes and react to things, one of the important things is they simply do not respond to typical communication from a nonprofit; they don't respond to direct mail, to telephone calling."
Others have attempted to create social networks around specific causes.
Change.org allows people to create and join virtual organizations around causes, then donate money to nonprofits or take other actions. The "Stop Global Warming" category, for instance, includes over 3,000 members who have donated money to nonprofits and also taken more than 1,500 actions, including things like getting online bank statements, throwing "An Inconvenient Truth" party, and replacing light bulbs.
Kiva.org, founded in 2005, connects lenders with entrepreneurs in developing countries. Lenders are able to feel a personal connection with a project and can get progress updates from the borrowers, instead of feeling that they are giving money to a nameless institution.
"Encountering their stories face-to-face, witnessing the effect of microfinance enables other people to have that feeling of helping another person help themselves," said Fiona Ramsey, public relations director for Kiva.
Technology has already radically changed people's personal lives, as laptops, cellphones, and Internet connectivity have become commonplace tools; now its sway is expanding into new areas.
"All that you're seeing here is the emigration of social entrepreneurship or the embrace of Internet technology in the service of social entrepreneurships," said Sheer of Pop!Tech. "What a perfect use for technology."
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.
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