This past week has been an interesting one and eye-opening in many ways.  The earthquake in Haiti has been a very emotional story for me, the many news reports really pulling at heart strings.  But as an active observer of the internet marketing space, I couldn’t help but notice two trends, both intriguing in their own ways.  I’d like to talk about the good and bad of social networking.

The Good of Social Networking

The Haiti earthquake happened overnight for me, so when I woke up and turned on my laptop, I couldn’t believe what filled my Twitter screen: thousands of Tweets and messages for relief help.  It was an eye-popping experience, and the reason for all the tweets was that Julie Schwietert Collazo of the Matador Network (disclosure: a TOP client) was trying to fill a plane of volunteers to go to Haiti when all was clear and safe.  Incredible!  The support was really pouring in.

Today, I received an email from Julie who finally had a chance to come up for air and share some news about the events of the week.  Here’s her story [edited for brevity]:

I don’t know if you’ve been following the story about the Bresma orphanage, but it’s run by friends of a friend of mine who have 150 kids under their care — all of whom have been living in the yard of the orphanage since the quake because the orphanage itself is structurally unsound to be inside. On Wednesday night, my friend asked me if I could do whatever possible to bring some attention to their story– the kids have adoptive families in the US, but had not had their visas finalized. Another friend of a friend in Pittsburgh had leveraged Twitter to push for their visas, which (amazingly) she accomplished in less than 24 hours. What was left to do was to find a way to get all the kids out of PaP, which is when Anne (my friend) asked if I could help find a private plane. Yes, a private plane.

Planes have been secured but there isn’t anywhere to land, so the effort to get the kids out of Haiti is still in progress as I write this.  Today, the situation at Bresma worsened. They ran out of water and were down to their final food rations. Though all the right people were pushing to get the kids out, it’s a logistical nightmare.

I contacted Vladimir, one of the first people to respond to our call of voluneers  and asked him to do everything he could to get water and food to Bresma.  After series of emails and calls, I finally received this message:  We were able to get in contact with the orphanage. We brought them a few supplies (canned food, some water, batteries, and bug spray). They were very appreciative. They should be okay until Wednesday when Cry Out will be there to help them.

You all realize how powerful social media can be. But I don’t think any of us really believed we could save lives.

Lesson Learned:  Social networking isn’t just about business.  When I tell you that you should be building a community, it isn’t just about selling them stuff.

The Bad of Social Networking

You know when Shannon talked about the bad jedi force of search engine optimization?  She said you shouldn’t use the dark side of SEO.  Well – disaster struck Haiti, and as the Tech Herald reports, some spammers decided to take advantage of the situation and use the dark force in a big way.  Using some naughty techniques, they got scams and pages filled with spyware/malware pages ranking for common keyword searches about Haiti and the quake.

While Google is well aware of this by now and hopefully taking care of the problem, because of the massive amounts of searches and the massive amounts of new pages appearing every day that mention the words Haiti (as well as the real-time indexing of Facebook and Twitter updates), it really is impossible to totally squash the problem at the moment.

Rumour mills also started on those networks with statements that free flights to Haiti were available, even though there still really isn’t much of an airport in Haiti!  Viral rumours have happened before, and the problem with viral information on the Internet is that you don’t always know when it is true and once something is snowballed, you can’t easily stop it.

Lesson Learned:  Is it any wonder why people are so skeptical of products and services online when stuff like this happens?  Keep this in mind when you are trying to establish trust and connections with your customers.  And don’t be the bad guy.  The world has enough problems already.

Closing Thoughts

I’ve really been blown away by this whole experience.  I had always found a lot of joy out of the social aspects of new media, and of course I really love how it has handed small businesses an amazing marketing weapon.  But the way the Facebook and Twitter communities have swung into action to support the relief efforts has been nothing short of breathtaking.  Who would have thought a family would use facebook to try and find their family?  Social media really has changed the way society communicates – mostly for good, but the bad guys will always be around to try and take advantage of  it.  I suppose that’s a risk we have to take to keep our networks open and easily accessible.

If you haven’t already made a donation in support of Haiti, I would encourage you to visit matadorchange.com where you’ll find the latest updates on their noteworthy volunteer campaign, suggested charities, as well as a list of donations needed and drop off points.

Photo by danboarder