“With great power comes great responsibility.”

I find myself caught between two worlds.  My job title is “Senior Marketing Manager” here at Crowd Factory.  The problem is I do not always write like a Marketing Manager.  It would be very easy for me to write 1000 words every day about how Crowd Factory is helping Fortune 500 companies measure the ROI of social media.  And don’t get me wrong, WE are, we REALLY are, but to truly appreciate the potential of what these products can do, look no further than Lady Gaga.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was reported to have said something very similar to the words of Spider Man (well, let’s be fair, Stan Lee).  The method of communication that we know as social/viral/real-time/streaming/if you blink you will miss something once again proved it’s worth in the last week when the ground came out from under the feet of the Japanese people.   When an earthquake almost burnt San Francisco to the ground in 1906 you were lucky if the telegraph worked. Now millions of people relied on Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to determine who lived and who died.  Think about that for a second, tools that once were considered to just be “fun for teenagers and college kids“ is now a system of notification on whether someone is alive or dead.

One of the reasons I made the choice to move from a corporate role as in-house online marketing manager to a startup that provides customer acquisition software is the people.  We are a group of people that live by a certain philosophy.  We provide enterprise wide tools but we also really care about how our customers use them.

This morning I walked down Market Street in San Francisco, stepping over the same trolley tracks that have probably been there since before the 20th Century. I passed buildings that may have been erected at a time when the California Gold Rush was at it’s height.  Imagine if Foursquare had been in use when there was a gold rush!? Then I heard that Lady Gaga has raised $250,000 by selling a small rubber bracelet to help the people of Japan begin their recovery process.

My hope is that I will continue to write posts to our blog here not only about the benefits and best practices of Crowd Factory and Social Media, but also how our team understands that we also have a responsibility: we help our customers create their brands online, but we also help them understand how to wield that power in order to influence the greater good for the planet.