Social media allows for an immediate way to interact and engage with people and companies online. There are the obvious sites that allow for social networking, but social media done right can aspire to be so much more. We thought we’d highlight three notable Twiistup showoffs who are doing big things with social media.

For those unfamiliar with the event, Twiistup features 10 companies chosen to show off their products and services, competing to win top honors. Even though we think all the competitors are worthy of the honor of showing off at tomorrow night’s big event in Los Angeles, we think each of the three featured startups are game changers when it comes to social change, social tech support, or social tagging. And, should you wish to make a prediction, you can cast your vote for who will win Twiistup 5.

Social Change

Causecast focuses on bringing together all walks of life to better our world. The community-focused site attracts high-profile thought leaders and savvy world-changing types to support non-profits, charities, and causes.

Users can browse categories to view new videos, related news, leaders (think celebrities and cause advocates), and search for specific organizations. Since each benevolent business has its own mini-community, it’s easy to find out more information about a cause, see who else supports it, view funds raised, get up close and personal with photos and videos, and opt to donate if feeling extra generous (donations are tax deductible with all funds going to the charities).

Causecast is a fantastic platform that offers users a myriad of ways to engage with causes or leaders, all the while serving up great original content that can be shared across the web.

Social Tech Support

Operating under the philosophy that users know best, FixYa has been providing do-it-yourself tech support, manuals, and troubleshooting tools for whiz kids and beginners alike since 2006.

The site, which is like an online user-driven Geek Squad or LinkedIn Answers for trouble-shooting, aims to harness the genius within, as well as help you make the most of your technology purchases either by learning how to repair or tweak products for enhanced performance. Members can also reference FixYa’s recommended top service repair providers by zip code and category for offline support.

Of course, if reputation matters, you can turn to FixYa’s best experts — site vetted specialists on a variety of topics — for a reasonable fee. Since solutions can be rated, and members are scored you can still get quality advice free of charge. FixYa also offers custom partnerships with business services and manufacturers, so businesses of all sizes can leverage FixYa for help with their support initiatives.

We also really love that new problems dynamically appear at the bottom of your screen, making it quick and painless to troubleshoot on areas of expertise as you browse.

All in all, FixYa massively improves upon the bulletin board style of other fix-it help sites, with a highly interactive, convenient, easy to use, and affordable solution to tech needs for over 1 million products.

Social Tagging

Viewdle is a digital media platform specializing in facial-recognition for enhancing indexing, search, and monetization of video assets. It boils down to smart video tagging of people for better meta data and search.

Viewdle’s system works by analyzing videos frame by frame (55 frames per second) for real-time results with on-screen appearances of your search queries, essentially making sifting through massive amounts of media pretty painless.

The company, which was originally targeting internal media departments, is now expanding into advertising services, developer tools, and end-user search. To see an example of Viewdle in the field, check out Reuters, which is currently offering Search-in-Video of their media, powered by Viewdle.

Viewdle’s social offering takes the shape of a consumer-facing Facebook app, VideoFriends. The handy tool lets you tag your friends in uploaded videos, and learns to recognize people automatically over time. We think this a big step forward, and will definitely help socialize your video content in the same way as your photos.