See What’s Out There

“Social Network Portability” is the new next thing. The idea is that you have a profile that you invest time in, say on Facebook. That profile can follow you to other interactions on other websites. So, for example, say I am writing a comment on Amazon. Why fill out a whole new profile, why not just carry my profile with me.

“Through Facebook Connect, members will be able to use their Facebook identities across the Web–profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook profile content, for example, could appear on other social sites, and Facebook event listings could theoretically connect with external event and invitation services.”

CNET’s News.com has what details there are at this point.

Big companies have their perks. I have spent this week in Orlando as an invited guest of SAP to talk about Web 2.0 and its impact on corporate social responsibility. It is very important discussion about how web tools can put pressure on the enterprise to be social responsible AND be a tool used by the business sector to solve problems, in association with all kinds of stakeholders. Stay tuned for more on this.

But last night, we took a break from all that and went to a private concert with Eric Clapton. Yes, a private concert with Eric Clapton. Me and 15,000 other guests went to the Amway Arena (I assume where the Orlando Magic play). We used our conference badges to get in and then once in all food and beer were free. Yup, they went all out.

Clapton totally lived up to his reputation. He was awesome. And he had a pretty great band with him as well, including a left-handed guitar player who wasn’t do bad himself. He played lots of hits and Cocaine — not my favorite song — rocked out. It was hot. He did a one song encore of Crossroads.

I had the pleasure of sitting with Shel Israel, who had joined my group earlier in the day and was part of the broadcast part of our discussion. (I will post a link to the first part of our session once I find it.) Shel said he has seen Clapton 4 times over 40 years. The first show he saw was in 1969 in the summer. Cool.

Of course I took a camera. Here’s some of the video. It’s not great quality (it was actually my daughter’s Kodak EasyShare digital camera), but you can get a hint of what you missed.

Clapton opened with Motherless Children

He played Little Wing!

Some acoustic action as well…

Wonderful Tonight… this one takes me back…

If you’re keeping score at home, I’m just about to participate in a roundtable discussion at the SAP conference in Orlando on Web 2.0 and what it means for Corporate Social Responsibility. There’ll be a handful of people on the panel from Intel, Verizon Communications, the Kennedy School, NetImpact, and more.

It’s being streamed live from the SAP website here, so if you have a minute (or an hour), check it out here. It’s on the right-hand side under LIVE WEBCASTS and we’re the 1:00pm session (that’s EST).

Hope to see you there.

I am attending the SAP Sapphire event in Orlando at the invitation of James Farrar, the VP of Global Citizenship for SAP. James has convened a terrific group of thinkers around corporate social responsibility. (And I am here also.) We had a session today that I wrote about, and tomorrow we will be live streaming a workshop about the impact of Web 2.0 on corporate responsibility.

Michael Hoffman with SAP co-CEO Leo Apotheker

If you don’t know SAP, they are the largest business software company in the world and the third largest independent software company in the world (behind Microsoft and Oracle).

So it is not everyday that I get the meet the CEO of a company that has more than $10 billion in annual sales. (Yes, that’s billion with a B. And, not that’s not market cap, that’s sales. Their market cap is about $63 billion.)

I met Leo Apotheker last night at an event and got to speak to him for a minute and he came tonight to the communications event that I attended. He has been named co-CEO and will take over as full CEO when Henning Kagermann transitions out. It was a great event and I would like to give a shout-out to the folks at Burson-Marsteller who are working their butts off putting it all together.

I am in Orlando at the major US event for SAP, the large German software company. There are about 15,000 people here with me at the Orlando Convention Center.

I was invited by SAP to be part of a workshop tomorrow about Web 2.0 and corporate social responsibility. Our workshop is tomorrow and the session I am in now is a panel of global thought leaders on corporate accountability. [It’s a long session - 3 hours — so I will blog in and out.]

The panel has:

James Farrar VP for Global Citizenship with SAP

Steve Rochlin
Head of AccountAbility North America

Graham Baxter
Director, Responsible Business Solutions
International Business Leaders Forum

Diane Osgood, PhD
VP, Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy
Business for Social Responsibility

David Seals
Strategy, Planning and Architecture
Chevron Corporation

Steve Rochlin is kicking us off talking about how expectations in corporate social responsibility is changing. He told a story about how he was on a plane for a trans-Atlantic flight sitting next to a woman and her two kids. The kids were totally obnoxious. At the end of the flight the flight attendant came up to him and said, “If you were my husband I would divorce you. The way you left your wife to be with those kids is terrible.” When told they were not his kids and the woman was not his wife the flight attendant said, “I am so sorry, the whole plane is talking about what a terrible father you are.”

He then related this to companies who might not be related to whatever issue is taking people’s attention, but because they are in the right place (or wrong place) the expectation of people is that they will be involved.

He is now telling a story about being in Marks & Spencer in London where it seemed all the clothes had labels saying they were sustainable, or didn’t have child labor, etc. “We are starting to see the tipping point… of changing consumer attitudes after 30-40 years of activism. Businesses has tremendously complex business relationship and accountability demands on them. They have to know that their supply chain, going 1, 2, 3, 4 tiers into their supply chain and know that they are not harming the environment or animals… And if they are wrong, it will blow up for them… A complex information management system for them to track and verify the data. Prove it. Prove to me that you dealt with the complex issues.”
More to come…

Continued…

David Seals is talking about operated properties where oil companies control things and non-operated properties where a national oil company might control and where the company tends to have less control over standards. A 5-10 year investment in drilling where you don’t own. Some of the legacy properties are running on old systems which presents a challenge to tracking the thousands of regulations

“Sustainability 2.0 has to be at a business process level.” James Farrar.

Interesting conversation about BP and how they have withdrawn from the public conversation about climate change and there are people within BP who are saying all that branding around green issues was a mistake because of how their accidents and safety problems and leaks have basically destroyed all that investment.

“If you can control [your processes and supply chain] and manage in this space there are huge opportunities” Graham Baxter said, using Marks & Spencer as an example because of their positioning around organic foods and the like.

Continued…

Graham Baxter is talking about his experience at BP and talking about collaborative action between oil and gas companies, countries and civil society organizations focused on operating principles around local conflicts.

He is now talking about Angola and how corrupt it was and how the company believed that this was a matter of public domain about what it was paying for its leases. John Brown (former BP head) thought he could talk about the $4 million signature bonus on an international platform. The government was furious and BP was threated with expulsion from Angola and were told not to talk about these transactions. It hurt BP and out of that the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative which is trying to create a culture to make all legitimate payments public and create transparency in those industries. It is a voluntary framework to enable companies to operate in difficult places with *some* protections.

continued…

David Seals is talking about Chevron and how they are using SAP to deal with compliance and assurance.
62,000 employeed in 182 different countries. How do you do compliance across so many local and national communities across so many people and offices. Chevron, Texaco and CalTex brands.

They have nine different SAP systems. But also some in-country operations run JD Edwards/Oracle. When you have compliance and tracking you have to span across organizations. So they have to import data from all these things. Plant maintenance on IBM platforms, etc… [Wow! What a nightmare.] Fragmented system.

In studying enterprise risk management they found that one of their refineries in California does all their carbon tracking on Excel. A 37-year employee. What are they going to do longer term? Not that.

He is describing the huge planning, budgeting and implementation projects with an SAP product to consolidate all this data and consolidate reporting.

GRC - Governance Risk and Compliance. Each part of Chevron - extraction, refining and gas stations - are all run basically independently. But they have controls and compliance issues that cross these companies, so they have to pull in data from all over.

Environment, Health and Safety. They are looking for solutions to track emissions management controls. The technical solutions will allow a corporate conversation around emissions that hasn’t happened before.

Different compliance officers in different departments. So they are talking about “enterprise risk management solution” basically a holistic look at all these issues instead of silos of independent regulations and people and divisions. This issue is on the Board agenda for the company. They are asking the question, why can’t you see this across the company.

Charities see potential in tapping young Web users to promote their causes online

By Wailin Wong

Tribune reporter

April 30, 2008

Online social networks used to be just gathering places for friends and long-lost acquaintances. Then the marketers arrived, followed by politicians and job recruiters, all looking to tap into a growing mass of young people who are spending much of their time on the Web. Now, non-profit organizations are testing ways to raise money through these networks, betting that the Internet’s viral nature will open fresh avenues for fundraising and marketing.

It’s a big change for non-profits as they shift from direct-mail campaigns and relying on the checkbooks of older givers to the unpredictable whims of Web popularity. Though the transition is nascent, charities see potential in recruiting young activists who already use online networks to broadcast their identities and make connections.

Actress Cynthia Osuji of New York is a case in point. She became interested in a women’s health non-profit when she received a mass e-mail about auditions for a Circle of Health International-sponsored benefit production of Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer.” The group also was seeking board members to plan the show.

After Osuji, 26, won a spot in the cast and joined the board, she added a copy of the show poster to her MySpace profile. Out-of-town friends who couldn’t attend the show ended up making donations and two “Facebook friends,” casual acquaintances who learned of the benefit through the site, came to the March performance.

Osuji said the show brought her back into community service, an activity she hadn’t pursued since high school. “Violence against women and women in conflict [areas] is something that’s very personal to me,” she said.

Circle of Health International has its own Facebook page, and 26-year-old Matt Bieber clicked on an application called Causes that allowed him to invite more than 100 of his 200-plus contacts to publicize the non-profit on their profile pages. His recruitment effort was akin to distributing virtual bumper stickers with the option to donate through the site. Eleven of his friends added the non-profit to their profiles.

Sean Parker, who helped create Causes, said, “If you can activate a group of people and get some of those people to replicate the process … you’ve got the basis for a movement.”

Outside of general communities like Facebook and MySpace, there are also social networking sites dedicated to philanthropy such as YourCause.com, HopeEquity .org and actor Kevin Bacon’s SixDegrees.org.

Now established institutions like the MacArthur Foundation and the Case Foundation want to know more about the tie between digital life and philanthropy. They are funding studies of online social networks, civic engagement in the Millennial Generation and philanthropy in virtual worlds like Second Life.

“We’re not claiming [online networks are] the panacea for philanthropies,” said Ben Binswanger, the Case Foundation’s chief operating officer. “[But] we think it’s way too early to dismiss it as an Internet fad. … We’re going to keep pushing down this path because we see enough spark here to make it interesting.”

Power to engage

For non-profits, the power of social networks is engagement, not necessarily sheer dollar numbers.

“If you send out a direct-mail piece, you never know if people open it up or not, unless they mail a check back to you,” said Steve Byers, director of development and communications at Kansas-City based WaterPartners International, which promotes safe drinking water. “With the online community, we know which pages they’re clicking on. … They want to provide feedback and interact with the organization in ways that are very exciting and challenging.”

WaterPartners created three fictional characters from Ethiopia, India and Honduras and placed them in a virtual village on Second Life to illustrate the challenges of accessing potable water. The avatars also have profiles on MySpace and Facebook, and shots of their Second Life village are posted on photo-sharing site Flickr. While the amount of money raised so far is tiny, Byers said he could see online marketing and fundraising slowly displacing direct mail.

“I’ve been in fundraising for over 20 years, so this is really kind of a brave new world for me,” he said. “I’ve really had to rethink my whole approach to fundraising through the Internet.”

Clearly, online fundraising is in its infancy. A survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy showed that online giving for 187 large charities totaled $1.2 billion in 2006, up from $881 million in 2005. But of 147 organizations, 103 said online donations accounted for less than 1 percent of total contributions in 2006.

“There is no really large, significant fundraising happening on social networks, but there’s a sense in the non-profit community that that’s where the prospects come from,” said Michael Hoffman, chief executive of Chicago non-profit consulting firm See3 Communications.

Building relationships

Some non-profits that have a presence on social networking sites have discovered a new relationship with users.

Carie Lewis, the Humane Society’s Internet marketing manager, said she finds herself responding to lots of mundane questions on pet care as a result of maintaining a presence on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. More important, Lewis said she’s discovered supporters outside the organization’s traditional demographic of women in their 50s.

“It was a lot of work, but it really paid off for us,” Lewis said. The Humane Society has raised more than $33,000 on Facebook from users who have set up pages to protest everything from puppy mills to seal clubbing in Namibia. The amount of money raised is small, but convinced Lewis’ bosses that the online efforts have merit.

“Traditionally, I think non-profits focus on high-value donors, and what MySpace provides is an enormous network of people who are able to get involved through volunteering, offline events and donating in smaller amounts,” said Lee Brenner, who oversees activism-related content on MySpace.

Link [Chicago Tribune]

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

The Obama campaign has already responded to the gas tax issue with a new ad. What’s amazing is how short the cycle for new creative has become. Can your organization produce something new in two days?

Link [Obama Ad on YouTube]

There is a new comScore report about online video.

Some highlights:

” U.S. Internet users viewed more than 10 billion online videos during the month, representing a 3-percent gain versus January (despite February being two days shorter) and a 66-percent gain versus February 2007.”

“In February, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with nearly 3.6 billion videos viewed (35.4 percent share of all videos), gaining 1.1 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 96 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.”

“Nearly 135 million U.S. Internet users spent an average of 204 minutes per person viewing online video in February.”

And, if you are still not sure you MUST have a video strategy consider:

Other notable findings from February 2008 include:

* 72.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
* 80.4 million viewers watched 3.42 billion videos on YouTube.com (42.6 videos per viewer).
* 50.2 million viewers watched 539 million videos on MySpace.com (10.7 videos per viewer).
* The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes.
* The average online video viewer consumed 75 videos.

Link [comScore Press Release]

Hat Tip [Jeremy Liew]

One problem that nonprofits have had is the lack of traffic to their sites, or lack of focused traffic to their actionable pages — such as donations or volunteer opportunities.

Greg McHale, a technology start-up veteran and the founder of cMarket, a auction management service for nonprofits, has started good2gether to solve this problem. What he is doing simply put is creating a database of nonprofit content and then syndicating that database across the websites of local media, such as newspapers and radio stations. The content is fed into a page next to articles based on the context of the article. So, for example, an article about literacy in Chicago would show information on a Chicago nonprofit fighting illiteracy. A click would take the visitor to the good2gether page, where the nonprofit can also sell corporate sponsorships — I assume the price of which is split with good2gether.

It is an interesting model and given that it’s free for the nonprofits it’s a no brainer to give it shot. Here’s Greg talking about it in his own words:

Link [what is
good2gether]
Hat Tip [Deborah Elizabeth Finn]

WebsiteOptimization.com has some interesting information about how web pages have grown in size and complexity over the last few years. You can read the whole story here and below is a piece of the story about multimedia that interests us in particular. Of particular interest is how many videos are abandon and how broadband is still catching up to allow for a seamless viewing experience.

The Growth of Multimedia on the Web

The use of streaming media on the Web has increased by more than 100% each year (Li et al. 2005). From 2000 to 2005 the total volume of streaming media files stored on the Web grew by more than 600%. More than 87% of all streaming media is abandoned by users in the first 10 seconds, however, wasting up to 20% of server bandwidth (Guo et al. 2005). [I wonder if that’s still true.] While only 3% of server responses are for videos, they account for over 98.6% of the bytes transferred (Gill et al. 2007). In true Pareto fashion, about 10% of the most popular videos on YouTube account for nearly 80% of the views, making caching an appealing performance enhancement (Cha et al. 2007).

Overall, for videos longer than 30 seconds, about 13% of home and 40% of business users experience quality degradation with their streaming media, caused by re-buffering, stream switching, and video cancellation. For sessions longer than 300 seconds, the results are even worse. As broadband penetration has increased, videos have grown in size, bit rate, and duration (see Figure 5).

In 1997, 90% of videos were under 45 seconds in length (Acharya & Smith 1998). In 2005, the median video was about 120 seconds long (Li et al. 2005). By 2007, the median video was 192.6 seconds in duration (Gill et al. 2007). The median bit rate of web videos grew from 200Kbps in 2005 to 328Kbps on YouTube in 2007. So by late 2007, the median video weighed in at over 63MB in file size. On YouTube, the average video size is 10MB, with over 65,000 new videos added every day.