My husband shared this fantastic op-ed from the Times with me the other day. In short, the NFL is arming fans with a text number so that they can report unruly and vulgar fans to security quickly and privately.
This is certainly a huge help to fans, particularly with children in tow, who want to enjoy a game and not hear beer-sloshed men spew obscenities nearby. But now imagine what else can be done with text messaging to make communities safer. What if your neighborhood in East Baltimore is being overridden by drug dealers? Here's a way to report it quickly, safely and securely to the police. And kids can report other students bringing weapons to school.
Of course, you're saying to yourself, "text messaging has been around for a while, what's the big deal?" The deal is this: old, slow moving institutions are finally waking up to the fact that social media can help engage a broad range of constituencies, whether it's a fan or a resident or a student, in immediate and safe ways. Social citizens within and without these organizations can help by suggesting ways that new media can be used to connect institutions to people. Tools like texting, Twitter, blogs and IM aren't going away - they certainly shouldn't - and at last they are becoming part of the toolkit of engagement and participation by all organizations.