Readings

Some holiday reading on social media and giving worth noting:

* Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Global Voices Online, writing about the use of social media in closed societies. Check it out here.

* Mario Morino's personal essay on the shifting landscape of need and giving in these uncertain economic times.

* Suzanne Seggerman's piece on video games-for-change and Barack Obama.

* Patty Stonesifer kicks off a new weekly advice column for Slate.com, called My Goodness, on "how to make the world a better place." Stonesifer, the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will be co-writing it with her daughter, Sandy, a project manager for a national study of the consequences of unintended pregnancy based in San Francisco. Read the introductory column here.

* Tom Watson's terrific new book, CauseWired, chiefly Chapter 7, on the rise of "flash causes." Watson has been a consultant with Changing Our World, Inc., and is a co-founder (with colleague Susan Carey Dempsey) of a new media consultancy called CauseWired Communications. Watson writes of flash causes:

"New groups organizing online are eschewing traditional labels and structures, creating themselves for short-lived but powerful campaigns, and then morphing into other types of causes and campaigns...These flash causes have changed the definition of charity and volunteerism, and they are an important microtrend."

(Illustration by Bodhi Hill for istock.com)