Thursday, November 25, 2010

YouTube + Wikipedia = Social Change

WASHINGTON, DC -- What do you get if you combine the video-sharing power of YouTube, the depth of information of Wikipedia and the social change aspirations of an advocacy website? Something called ViewChange.org, as I found out last week when I attended its formal launch at AED headquarters here.

U.S. independent television broadcaster, Link TV, launched “the next generation multimedia platform for global development” that combines powerful video stories with the latest “semantic” technology that allows a person, after viewing one of the many powerful short videos showing "good news" development stories, to extract more information about that issue, and then to take action in a variety of ways. ViewChange.org is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

After watching a video, you have three options: “Watch More” (as in, watch more videos), “In the News” (to explore an issue in more depth) and “Take Action” (which presents you with a variety of concrete actions ranging from taking political action, donating to a cause or writing a letter to the editor). Every video is tied specific actions that the viewer can take.

ViewChange.org goes way beyond YouTube, where the end point is the merely emotion elicited by the video. With ViewChange.org, the idea is that after the viewer is moved emotionally, the viewer will be moved practically to action.