See What’s Out There

The big news in social networking and tech is the new open platform of Facebook. Facebook is a hot social networking site and the open platform means that I can build an application and have members of Facebook spread this to all of their online friends. Project Agape, a company that built the first causes application for Facebook, has surpassed 1 million users to their application and raised over $100,000 — in about 1 month. Their application is called Causes, and when you sign up you can pick from many causes, such as Save Darfur or One.org. An icon of the cause shows up on your profile page and your friends get notified about it and anyone on your page can then click to donate or learn more.

There are problems with this Facebook thing, the biggest of which is that the application you build has to run on your own servers, which means only those with the resources to serve data to millions need apply. (If you are interested in these issues read Marc Andreessen.) But I digress.

This is only the beginning and I will write more about where this is going and all of the other players working on bringing nonprofit causes to Facebook.

Most commentators say Facebook’s move to open up is a game changer. MySpace, the biggest of the social networks, has allowed widgets for a long time. Widgets are embedded mini-applications, such as a video player or slide show of my photos from Flickr. But a widget doesn’t harness the native functions of the network in the way Facebook’s platform does. And MySpace has limited what you can put in a widget, not allowing you to have advertising for example. Facebook has not such restriction — meaning they are allowing the companies that will develop application to monetize those application — which will obviously attract more developers.

So today I heard that MySpace is working on opening up as well. The business idea here is that a platform is more valuable than an application. People will use an application. But if many people build many interesting applications on your platform, they make the platform indispensable. It’s kind of like Windows (used to be?) — the platform (Windows) supported and made necessary by all of the applications (Word and Excel and games, etc.) built on top of it.

The open platform idea is not limited to the social networking folks. A pioneer of this has been Salesforce.com. Salesforce is an online application to manage your contacts and sales information. They realized a while ago that they had a very strong database application and invested a lot in infrastructure. So they allow others to use this base and build on top. So, for example, companies have built applications for the tracking of donations on top of Salesforce.com. There is even an application to track blood donations. The buyer of any third-party application must also subscribe to Salesforce.com. For the company producing the application, they don’t have to worry about anything other than the presentation layer, they can hook into Salesforce for the rest.

Amazon has gotten into the act as well. Of course they have big servers and know how to manage data. So they said, in addition to selling books and music and everything else, why not let people use our infrastructure. For example, want to put your products in our warehouse and utilize our mailing and software to pick and ship? Why not? Among other things, they launched a service called S3, which means Simple Storage Service. They are saying… you build a web-based application and you need to store something — data, photos, video, whatever. And you can keep adding servers and paying lots of money, but we already have this, so why not use our servers and pay-as-you-go a small fee per gig.

There is word that Blackbaud (Nasdaq: BLKB), the largest company in the fundraising software space, is moving toward opening up their systems. And I saw something about Kintera (Nasdaq: KNTA), a company that is bleeding cash, thinking of opening up as a way to attract developers who will make the product more useful. I just read that LinkedIn, the business networking site is working to open up as well. I think we should expect this trend to continue.

It seems opening up and that open API is indeed the new black.

So the annual meeting of the US Fund for UNICEF last week at Jazz at Lincoln Center was an interesting event. The event had two parts — a meeting from 2pm to 5:30 and then a cocktails and dinner starting at 6:30. Lucy Liu headlined the meeting part. Jenna Bush spoke about the book she “wrote” for teenagers about her experience as a UNICEF volunteer in Latin America. The head of UNICEF, Ann Veneman — who was President George W. Bush’s first Secretary of Agriculture, and the first woman to have that job — also spoke as did some other UNICEF folks about their mission and work. The highlight of the two panels during the meeting part was Jim Wooten, a journalist no longer working for “the man” and so he was not afraid to tell it like it is.

The dinner part had Ishmael Beah, who wrote a very powerful book called A Long Way Gone about his life as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. The book was marketed out of Starbucks with UNICEF getting some proceeds and it still is on the New York Times best seller list. Dr. Sanjay Gupta also spoke at dinner and so did Tea Leoni, who is really the complete package — seriously smart, from a good family and stunning. She is the kind of person who would be an investment banker or lawyer if not for show-biz.

Here are some random thoughts I jotted down during the event.

* They are being very candid about their problem with messaging. Everyone has heard of UNICEF, but no one really knows what they do. They actually said this clearly and in response they have radically simplified their messaging. Their new tag line is: Whatever it takes to save a child’s life.

* They have lots of great video material, but are only scratching the surface in how they are using it.

* Jim Wooten rules. He basically exposed a part of the television news business that we don’t hear much about. He described how reporters have to negotiate with their bosses. Why do you want to cover that story? Is it a ratings winner? How much will it cost to send you to Africa? Can you do 5 stories on this trip instead of one so the cost per story is less?

* Celia Dugger from the New York Times was on the same panel with Jim Wooten. She said… To the credit of my employer, I can go anywhere I want whenever I want to pursue any story about poverty and global development. It felt like a remnant of an old-world business model where the journalism was the most important thing. Lets hope the Times can keep that up in the face of diminishing revenue.

* Marcus Samuelsson the celebrity chef and founder of a great New York restaurant called Aquavit also spoke. He is an Ethiopian Swede. He was born in 1970 and his parents died of tuberculosis. He and his sister took refuge in a Swedish hospital and a nurse arranged their adoption to a Swedish couple. He gives back by making all of the corporate partners that want him for books and kitchenware give a percentage of the profits to fight poverty and disease in Africa. He’s a very magnetic speaker, handsome and engaging and is a great asset to any organization that gets him.

* Jenna Bush. Oy. I mean, I can understand why having her write a book for teenagers about volunteerism and poverty is a good idea, but seriously. She did teach public school in Washington D.C. and she did good work for UNICEF in Panama. But… to quote from Wikipedia… “In November 2006, she and her sister were asked to leave Argentina by the U.S. Embassy. The twins had traveled to Buenos Aires to celebrate their birthday; however, amid reports of lax Secret Service security and the Bush twins “running naked down a hotel corridor,” their departure was strongly recommended by Argentine officials.[10]” Compared to someone like Marcus Sameulsson, Jenna is the lightest of lightweights.

* The cocktail hour was fun. The Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center is really nice. The US Fund for UNICEF has some great employees. I met some folks who were at ACLU before and my friends in the Interactive Donor Communications group rule. These are the mid-level folks who could be anywhere in corporate America and be very successful and they actually are trying to do some good in the world.

* At the dinner, Dr. Sanjay Gupta was OK. They showed a reel of him in Africa and to his credit he has gone to some difficult places, including Darfur and the Chadian border. He didn’t say anything remarkable. It was a little too polished and self-congratulatory for my taste. [In contrast, see how Ann Curry from NBC spoke at the AJWS event.]

* Ishmael Beah on the other hand was terrific. He was casual, comfortable and relaxed in front of this high-powered audience. He said, if you want to know my story, you can read my book. And he said that we are all addressing huge problems. But UNICEF saved me. And there are many other me’s around who have also been saved. And so there is no Ishmael Beah approach — there are many approaches. But don’t forget, when the problems can seem overwhelming, that there are people like me who have meaningful lives because of the work you do.

That’s all for now.

One of the things we have been doing for the American Jewish World Service is training their staff to shoot video. We don’t want their efforts to document their work on the ground to begin and end with professional production. In that vain we have encouraged them to shoot photos and put up narrated slide shows. Slide shows are a low cost way to show what you are up to. We put this one together for them with photos and voice from one of their staff who just returned from Darfur. Take a look, and if you want to give a little to help you can donate here.