Social media beyond facebook and twitter

When most of us when we hear the term social media we only think of facebook or twitter. A few people may include youtube and vimeo in their definition. I doubt many people include other forms of media beyond these narrow definitions. Social media is much more than a facebook page. 

Foldit is a video game that is a prime example of this broader definition. Foldit was created by the University of Washington to see if a world wide community of gamers could play and collaborate to solve medical problems. The gamers work alone or create collaborative teams to solve puzzles and researchers use the puzzle solutions in their work.



The objective of the game is to fold proteins and get as high a score as possible in the process. The solutions with the highest scores are analyzed by scientists to see if those solutions can be applied to solve real world problems. One such problem was the M-PMV retrovieral protease that had stumped the medical research community for 15 years.  When the problem was put on Foldit a collaborative gamer group found a solution in 10 days.

Social media can be much more than drunken pictures on facebook or a celebrity twitter feed. Social media can gather people from around the world and use any media type available to solve real world problems. This is exactly what the Foldit community does, and it's done with a video game.