Stanford students' video helps effort to save preemies
Through an experimental class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business that tries to use social media for the public good, a trio of students posted a video to YouTube this spring promoting an organization that hopes to save the lives of millions of prematurely born babies in India and other developing nations by creating an innovative low-cost baby incubator.
A version of the students' video on behalf of the nonprofit organization Embrace will soon be appearing on digital billboards across India, after it was noticed on YouTube by the CEO of India's first interactive digital billboard company. That instant digital connection from Palo Alto to Mumbai — unthinkable before the era of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — is the focus of "The Power of Social Technology," a new class that Stanford business professor Jennifer Aaker was inspired to teach after watching one of her students launch an effort on the Internet to find South Asian bone marrow donors for two friends who were critically ill with leukemia.