Google is “All For Good”

April Nelson - June 24, 2009

Google just launched a new site, www.allforgood.org, which allows people to find volunteer activities throughout the US, thus creating a “social media search engine” of sorts. Bringing communities together in this form was encouraged by President Obama when Serve.gov was launched earlier this year. Allforgood.org now even powers the search tool on serve.gov.

All users have to do is enter the type of volunteer work they want to do and then specify their location. With that, a slew of results are given to the searcher via the Google powered search engine. This has many ramifications on the world of social media. For one, I think that the other major search engines, Yahoo and Bing, are more likely to get involved if allforgood.org takes off. Also, with the technology that Google is innovating (Google has launched an API to allow developers to use the data in their own applications); other social media websites will likely follow suit making their own websites as advanced as possible.

Lastly, another really nice feature to the new website is that you are able to log in via Google Friend Connect. This tool gives users the ability to use their Google, AIM or Yahoo password to gain access, making it as community friendly as possible. This will no doubt inspire people across multiple social media platforms to participate in this unique social media experiment.