The Internet and Social Media has made the world a little smaller, more familiar and allows people to communicate in ways that have not been possible in past generations. Websites like Facebook or Twitter unite people for a cause, educate or reconnect long lost friends. But as with anything else, with the good comes the bad.

Recently there has been some buzz about smartphones, geotagging and what that means for the photos you place on social media sites you use.

Smartphones have the ability to track your location by attaching latitude and longitude coordinates to the photos you take with your phone. This is called geotagging and it is a feature built into many of today’s smartphones.

Geotagging data attached to your photos allows someone to determine, with great accuracy, the whereabouts of your home, your place of work or even your child’s school. Many people are unaware this feature exists on their smartphones and innocently post personal photos online ignorant of the potential security risks they are taking.

Thankfully, turning off your smartphone’s geotagging feature is fairly simple. Because each smartphone is different, however, we recommend you go to your phone manufacturer’s website to get exact instructions on how to do this.

Safe boundaries are important not just for our children but for you, our sponsors, as well. In blog posts like What Should I Do if My Sponsored Child Contacts Me Via Facebook? and Why Can’t I Communicate With My Sponsored Child Via Facebook? we outline some of the reasons behind Compassion’s communication policies.

As a child advocacy organization, we believe that children should be kept safe and protected in all situations, including online. The reality is, there are unscrupulous people in this world and we want to educate you with posts like these so that you can make informed, wise decisions with the data you share on social media sites.

Technology is ever growing, changing and evolving. It is easy to get intimidated by it all but don’t let it scare you away. Online communication is a great tool. We just need to be safer and smarter about the personal information we share with others.

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Do I have fun on occasion? You bet. Is most of it work? Always, and did I mention that saving kids from poverty is my commitment? No? Well, there you go.

Recently I was sent by Compassion to the Forrester’s Consumer Forum which is a think-tank of an organization in the marketing industry.

Forrester speaks precisely about ways companies can target trends and future ideas for getting a product or organization into the eyes of the public through social media.

Some serious marketing research takes place. Seriously.

I was there to learn from the experts about social networking techniques for the internet.

Now I see those wheels turning. Compassion’s trying to be trendy? Compassion looks at the future of the marketing industry? Compassion sees a child as a product?

Well, sort of.

What I discovered in the forum is that huge corporations are dishing out millions if not billions to give their products a pleasing experience that you can relate to.

A pleasing experience with toothpaste? A pleasing experience with credit cards?

How about the experience of sponsoring a child?

I am proud to say that Compassion is doing exactly what it should, from a social media perspective, to help children in poverty.

We are giving the world a true experience of a child sponsorship.

Through churches, through word of mouth, through the internet, through this blog and through our social networks such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter,

Compassion is changing lives.

Yes, the world is changing and we at Compassion are changing with it, and that’s a good move, right? That’s a healthy choice you can agree with, right?

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