Seoul, KOREA ¶ Dec 22, 2011 (Whowired) -- The act of sharing and writing down your thought is increasingly tapped as a source of effective charity campaigns among Korean brands of late. SK Telecom, the leading wireless carrier in Korea, for example, recently ran its "Be a Happy Santa" campaign -- a "social donation" which features a unique "social" charity program: reader comments on social media like Twitter, Facebook, MeToday (Korean home-grown version of Twitter) can translate into donation.

Through the campaign, SK Telecom contributed 1,000Won each time users posted their comments on the company's official social media sites. From Dec 6 through 19, a total of 6,286 comments or "shared voices of its customers" had been posted and these added up to 6,286,000 Korean Won (pittance by any standard for charity money but meaningful enough both the participants). SK Telecom donated the money to children at a day care center in Seoul.

The trend of "reader comments based charity" is especially notable among the broadcasting outlet and pet industry in the nation. SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System), one of four major national television and radio networks, has achieved a huge success in their "social charity" campaigns. Its "SBS Radio Gorilla Share Day" -- the stations' iconic CSR program run since 2010 -- has made a sizable chunk of contribution to big charitable organizations including World Vision and Save the Children.

The campaign for the year (SBS will donate 50Won per each reader comment) so called "Hat Knitting to Save Newborn Babies -- Season 5" aimed at achieving a total of 350,000 user comments (translated into 17,500,000 Won) in just one day and the results proved very successful. Contribution accumulated each time the audience wrote down their comments on the related site, will be used for the project of knitting hats for the underprivileged infants in poor countries.

Regardless of the ultimate results (the number of reader comments), this kind of social charity campaign proves very meaningful in that it can realize "participatory charitable acts" employing social media platform: Users' "shared idea and act" will translate into "shared value" and "shared love." Indeed, the face of charity is rapidly changing and another move in this regard could be found in social entrepreneurship frenzy.

The aim of social entrepreneurship is not to make a profit or prosper, but to be more effective, and earn money to serve a social need without having to rely solely on the charity of others. Whatever the ramifications of this "social" kind of charity movements will turn out to be, the word "social" is increasingly a surefire recipe to bring out meaningful success to those varied goals -- whether it's charity or not.

Sam Kim (press@whowired.com)