Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week or gave up social media for Lent, you’ve probably seen Tweets and Facebook posts about Saving the Invisible Children of Uganda, Kony 2012, or making Joseph Kony Famous. These are the result of an incredibly successful social media campaign by nonprofit organization, Invisible Children, to raise awareness about Joseph Kony and bring him to justice. At the heart of the campaign is an emotional 30-minute documentary, Kony 2012, which tells the heartbreaking story of young children in Uganda being abducted from their homes and forced to become child soldiers in the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Launched on Monday, the documentary has quickly gone viral with over 55 million YouTube views.

The campaign leveraged celebrities, such as Oprah and Ryan Seacrest, to distribute the video through their social networks. It also took advantage of users’ willingness to share compelling content with their networks.

The video popped up on my social network on Tuesday. I didn’t immediately pay attention to it, but I saw more posts on Wednesday, so I decided to watch the video. I knew little about the subject matter and had never heard of Joseph Kony, so I was affected by the video and supported it. On Thursday, I noticed some people in my network had posted articles pointing out flaws in Invisible Children’s campaign.

This motivated me to dig deeper. I read articles suggesting that Joseph Kony is a terrible man and needs to be stopped, but the problem is a lot more complicated than the 30-minute documentary suggests. For example, if we were to arrest Joseph Kony, what would happen to the child soldiers? Would they be incorporated back into their villages? The video doesn’t say anything about its plans after Kony is arrested.

Politics and foreign policy aside, I think it’s interesting to note how our social networks can affect our opinions. According to the Kony 2012 film, there are more people on Facebook today than there were on the planet 200 years ago. That’s a lot of Facebook users who have built social networks with people whom they trust and are influenced by.

If I had received the same content in an email from Invisible Children, I likely would have deleted the email without watching the video. Since I saw so many people in my network talking about it, I became intrigued and willing to spend 30 minutes to watch the film. I trusted the campaign and bought into it more easily because my social network seemed to trust it. My opinion was impacted again and I was motivated to do additional research when I saw people posting articles urging us to think critically before jumping on the Kony 2012 bandwagon.

What do you think? Are you more willing to read articles when they are posted by your network? Are you influenced by their opinions?

According to a recent Nielsen study of 20,000 mobile consumers, there is a direct correlation between a person’s age and income and his likelihood to own a smartphone.

Well, that’s not a big shock. However, what I find interesting is that over half of the respondents age 18-24 making less than $15,ooo/year own a smartphone. That age and income bracket is more likely to own a smartphone than the older people in the $100,000+ bracket.

That’s a significant figure. It could be attributed to parents paying their children’s phone bills while they are in college. Even so, in the next age bracket, 25-34, 43 percent of people making less than $15,000/year own a smartphone.

This evidence shows that younger people, despite living on a tight budget, value owning a smartphone and are willing to pay more for data plans and expensive phones. Also, it shows that this a critical demographic to consider when building your mobile strategy.

What do you think? Are you at all surprised by the study’s findings?

I recently read an article by the Associated Press about a Kenyan village Chief, Francis Kariuki, who uses Twitter to locate missing farm animals and children, to organize the village, and to keep residents safe. In one example in the article, thieves had broken into a school teacher’s home at 4 a.m. Kariuki posted a tweet and, within minutes, village residents gathered outside of the home and the thieves fled.

Kariuki has 300 followers, but he estimates that his tweets directly and indirectly reach thousands of residents. Many of the residents cannot afford smartphones, but they access tweets through a third-party mobile phone application.

Using Twitter saves a lot of time and money. “I no longer have to write letters or print posters which take time to distribute and are expensive,” Kariuki said to the Associated Press.

Kariuki also sends messages of hope, and he plans to use Twitter to promote peace during the upcoming presidential election. According to the Associated Press, it’s the first election since the 2007-08 post-election violence in which 1,000 people in Kenya died.

I’m constantly amazed by how people creatively use Twitter to better their lives and communities. What’s the most innovative way you’ve seen Twitter used?

Cuba has recently criticized Twitter for spreading rumors that Fidel Castro had died. This rumor became a trending topic on Twitter, which was also criticized by Cudbadebate,a state-controlled website.

Twitter has a clear policy to not mediate content and confirmed to Mashable that this policy was upheld in this instance.

This isn’t Twitter’ first rodeo (and likely won’t be its last) when it comes to upsetting government officials. This leads to the big question: Should Twitter monitor its content?

My personal answer is no. The beauty of Twitter is that it provides a channel for people to freely share information and content. If Twitter starts monitoring what people post, it will detract from what makes it great.

What do you think? Should Twitter mediate rumors and controversial content?

We’re proud to announce that one of our premier web projects, CenturyLink’s Business Markets Intranet, has been named as one of the World’s 10 Best Intranet sites for 2012!

As an unrelenting advocate for usable, functional and (of course) good looking websites, I’m especially proud of this recognition. The Nielson Norman Group is a leading user-experience research firm with worldwide name recognition among the web and user experience design community.  As a long time reader of Jakob Nielson’s Alert Box, it’s humbling to know that our hard work and dedication is going to be used as an example for other designers to learn from.

Peak has worked on the Business Markets Intranet since 2007, when we helped turn a meandering, hard-to-use and outdated collection of HTML files and broken links into a streamlined, user-friendly intranet site powered by a custom content management system powered by Ruby on Rails.

In 2010, the CenturyLink (then Qwest) team engaged us, in partnership with Denver-based EffectiveUI, to redesign the site, revamp the content, and create an even more engaging, task-oriented website for it’s Business Markets team. We delivered a new site that not only added powerful tools that educate users, but also recognizes and empowers them as valuable parts of the organization.

We’re extremely proud of the result.  It’s not easy to get recognition outside of the client organization for intranet sites since they’re obscured from the public by firewalls and passwords!

Business Markets Intranet Team: Bruce Black (CL), Brad Umbaugh (EUI), Jeff Hansen (CL), Brenda Van Der Steen (CL), Emily Puffett (CL), Timberlyn Wilson (CL), Rhia Bucklin (Peak), Rick Wangen (Peak), Shelley Washburn (EUI), and Michael Salamon (EUI).