Can the real-time web bring real world change? Thus asked Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as she delivered her keynote address during the Le Web tech conference a few days ago in Paris, France.

She pointed out that poverty, disease and education are the big challenges facing today’s world. Then later she asked: can social networks solve these social problems? I completely agreed with her when she said that online activism can effect real change in the offline world and that digital advocacy could translate to analog action. Aside from being a great source for news, social networks can also serve as platforms for collaboration and as mouthpieces to mobilize people.

The tech-savvy queen mentioned how social networks were utilized to help the victims of typhoon Ketsana in the Philippines and other examples of online collaboration that led to real-world change. She said, “Digitizing ourselves have heightened our awareness to be selfless. What we need now is to amplify our actions.”