Media in the New Millennium

Posted by Lisa Metzger

We all know that social media is fun…we rant, we stalk old high school flames, we post random thoughts, we boast about our kids. We let all our friends know what we had for lunch and how truly satisfying our double shot mocha frappuccino was this morning.

I’ve been known to do all the above. But, while the entertainment factor of social media is undeniable enormous, I am constantly amazed at how powerful social media is as a catalyst for change…important societal change. Change at a level that can impact the way we live, see ourselves and how we relate to each other on a real and very basic human level.

Invisablepeople.tv was started by Mark Horvath, and if you haven’t heard about it, today is the day. It’s one of the most wrenching and heart-breaking sites you’ll ever see. Take a look; it’s hard to watch but almost harder to turn away from.

The beauty of Invisiablepeople.tv is its simplicity. “All” it is is a collection of YouTube-length video profiles of homeless people. Horvath – himself a recovered addict who lived for 15 years on the streets – has posted hundreds of raw, brutally honest – and brutally compelling – interviews with homeless people from around the country. (You can donate on the site.)

What is especially interesting about Horvath, now a Hollywood producer, is the way he has used social media to draw attention to his site and to the issue of homelessness in America. A year ago he began using Twitter to document his cross-country treks; he posted his straightforward interviews where his subjects simply told their stories and people started to listen. People started following him. People wanted to help. Donations started coming in, bloggers started writing about him. Author, blogger and social media guru Chris Brogan has weighed in; Chris Pirillo, organizer of the huge annual blogger conference, Gnomedex, has as well.

And, perhaps even more powerful is the fact that large corporations – Ford Motor Company and Hertz to name a few – have aligned themselves with Horvath and invisablepeople.tv and have become sponsors of his travels.

As Brogan commented on a recent NPR story, “invisablepeople.tv marks a new way of supporting a social cause; not through some big non-profit, but directly through one person doing one good thing.”

That is possible, in my opinion, because of the unique immediacy and intimacy of social media.

Today invisablepeople.tv has nearly 7,000 Twitter followers and over 3,000 Facebook fans.

Check it out.

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