Idea: Level 2 Social Media

See the category Category:Is-Level 2 Social Media for some (mostly imperfect) examples of this idea.

"Level 2" social media is where the media is used to help "other" people.

Most social media is aimed at allowing people to use it to connect to other people for themselves. We're calling this "level 1" social media.
Level 1 social media allows people to connect to new friends, old friends, services and a variety of useful resources for themselves.
The idea behind Level 2 social media is that the Users have "clients." The clients can be friends, relatives, members of their church, neighbors, or actual clients of a social service organization. The users can be individuals, neighborhood leaders, neighborhood "helpers," social workers, political operatives, or anyone who wishes to be helpful to people that are primarily not themselves.
A unique characteristic of level 2 social media is the potential for users to introduce people to each other. Match-making is therefore one of the uses for level 2 social media. Some web sites already do that. For example see Necter, a Philadelphia-based level 2 social media.

To keep demographic and needs information about clients.
To allow anonymous information about clients to be shared so it can be found by other helpers.
To maintain contacts with other helpers.
To build trust relationships with other helpers.
To enable each helper to better know the skills and resources of other helpers.
To enable each helper to have access to information about the kinds of clients other helpers are working to help.
To seek out potential connections that may be beneficial to the clients.
To work with other helpers to suggest potential appropriate matches between their clients.

The Argonauts (Ancient Greek: Ἀργοναῦται Argonautai) were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War, around 1300 BC, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece.
- Definition of Argonauts from Wikipedia
The Social Argonaut could be any hero who uses their talent for being helpful to move society towards an era of Golden Peace
Social Argonauts could be defined as the "helpers" and "users" of Social Media Level 2. Their quest and adventure is using level 2 social media to be helpful to the people they are serving. They become heroes by making people's lives easier and social interactions more meaningful.

One of the most powerful ideas I have seen concerning community development is embedded within a project called the Connecting People Study. This project conducted research on what might be called "community-based networked social work." However, I believe that by limiting the scope of the idea to social work in a mental health setting, the project lost steam. I will be adding info here about the status of the project as I find it. In the mean time, Check out the video below...
Here is a link to the animated video demonstrating the idea behind the Connecting People Intervention Model.