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.

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

I went to several Web 2.0 sessions at NTEN, Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans last week. It was amazing how many there were, sometimes even two at the same time. They were all very good, and all the same. My one criticism of all of them is addressed at the end of this post. Also at the end, I have embedded the presentations of several of those folks I mention.

The first session I attended was specifically about social networking and led by Brian Reich of Echo Ditto, author of Media Rules!

Brian’s big point was that there’s a lot of noise to cut through and to engage people you must deploy quality, focused, niche communications. Volume and frequency are not primary considerations. Most importantly, participate with authenticity. This is something anyone studying the space knows. You must be a credible member of the community sharing useful information and thoughtful comments before anyone will respond to your asks.

A good tip Brian mentioned was to deputize people to grow your network for you. This is something we have been working on at See3 – methods to build a network of influencers in the social networks who will carry your torch. Giving people certain authority to speak on your behalf, and rewarding them with praise or titles or special invitations to events, etc. In other words, to formalize that relationship is a great idea. Another point Brian made was that perhaps Facebook and Myspace are not for your organization. You may find better success participating in a niche social network like Changents or Gather. I suggest another one to explore, Rethos.

Brian provided an overview of many of the social networks out there. He talked about LinkedIn, but he did not address LinkedIn for Good. I asked him afterwards if he knew of any case studies or saw any potential for using LinkedIn for Good, which launched last year with much buzz but seems like nothing but tumbleweeds rolling by since. His thoughtful response: “I know a bunch of people have tried (and there has actually been some discussion within the NTEN blogs and community about it) to use LinkedIn as a fundraising platform. The LinkedIn platform isn’t structured exactly to support direct fundraising, and I think people don’t necessarily appreciate when you don’t respect the medium. But I have seen groups use LinkedIn to form committees that do fundraising, to have people volunteer time from an in-kind standpoint, etc. So, if you use the right tools through LinkedIn, you can get that much closer to a donation–so I’d say that is a better path. All experiments still, but there is clearly potential.”

Brian emphasized that social networking is not for every organization, and that you must consider your goals, strategies, tactics, and resources, not assuming the use of any particular tool. This notion was echoed by the other presenters on this topic that I saw, but Brian said it the best and with the most authority: “If you leave this conference, go back to your team and say, ‘We need a Facebook strategy’ then I have failed…”

Beth Kanter led a mere four sessions. I attended two of them. The first was about ROI. Coming from a background in SEM and lead generation, I was so glad to see “Web 2.0 ROI” as the title of a session. Beth pointed out a great study on blogging ROI from Forrester. She asked the audience how many people use formal ROI evaluations with regard to social media efforts. I was glad my hand was up but sad it was one of only two.

The first panelist was Eve Smith from Easter Seals. They tried the Causes challenge – seeking donors on Facebook - and her biggest takeaway was that influencers are more valuable than donors. I assume what she means is that if you find the influencers, they will bring you more donors than you could find on your own. Makes sense.

Wendy Harman from the Red Cross gave her case study on Project Listen. She does an amazing job at communicating with and monitoring the blogosphere and reporting on coverage of her organization. Her take-aways from that activity are that internally, people love the feedback from bloggers, and externally, people love to know that you care.

Danielle Brigida from NWF presented a case study on Digg and StumbleUpon. It took her 7 months to establish relationships in the Digg community sufficiently to get good results (ie, popular stories). Just like anywhere else, you have to be a credible, authentic participant and contribute valuable information in order for others to reciprocate. In StumbleUpon, she saw results from being the source of quality, relevant info. I have embedded Danielle’s PowerPoint below.

Carie Lewis, who does tremendous things on Myspace and in other social media channels, gave a case study on HSUS’s video contest after the Michael Vick dogfighting incident. HSUS only got 22 entries but from a marketing perspective it was a success in part because Hulk Hogan did the promo video for the contest. She learned from the experience to require email in the voting tool, target people likely to submit videos, and do more blogger outreach. See3 has run many successful video contests (a few examples here, here and here). Video contests can be a great way to give your community something tangible to do and create great content for your organization in the process.

Justin Perkins from Care2 presented his famous social media ROI calculator. The big take-away here is that if you assume one full-time staff member getting paid $52k/yr dedicated to social media can yield even 10,000 new email addresses for your organization in a year (which I agree would be a lot), then your CPA is $5.20/name. Justin says “there are cheaper ways to acquire email addresses.” He respectfully refrained from plugging Care2, which uses a brilliant petition process to find supporters for your cause among their network of 7 million activists at the cost of between $2-3/name.

My understanding of Care2, based on comments from Care2 clients, is that the lists perform well, however the demographic is clearly progressive, and somewhat skewed to middle-aged women. So how much any organization should rely on Care2 for list-growth really depends on your mission, objectives, and your own community. There is a lot more to this discussion, such as all of the potential benefits to social media marketing beyond strictly list-growth, such as branding, fostering community, creating discussion, distributing media materials, participating in existing communities, and many other results more difficult to fit in a spreadsheet. Again, what are your goals.

Another Web 2.0 related session I attended was See3’s Michael Hoffman about online video, which he already summarized. My take-aways from his session: “viral to what end?” Michael made the point very well that everyone wants their video to go viral, but that is not a legitimate goal in itself. Views do not necessarily lead to donations and email addresses. You need a strategy for your video and your call to action. This relates to Michael’s other session on using microsites to convert views to action. He said it’s important to start with stories and to have a strong call to action. Now here’s the part where I criticize my boss. He showed this as an example of a direct response piece, which is a great video and performed well in the email appeal for which it was created, but not nearly as well as this one, which has a much stronger call to action and is the better example.

The last session on Web 2.0 I attended was called “The Next Latest Thing: The Future of Technology in Nonprofits” led by John Kenyon with Beth. I have to say, the title of this session was misleading. Upon reflection, “the next latest thing” seems cheeky, but “the future of technology in nonprofits” seemed like a fun exploration into the unknown rather than a run-down of the most contemporary tools everyone else was talking about. Nevertheless, what I liked about this session was that John did a great job of getting comments from the crowd after each point, creating some discussion and incorporating feedback into his presentation. What I also liked about this session is that John echoed many things we advocate at See3: tell stories, get user-generated content as a great way to efficiently acquire marketing material and ignite your audience, use media to engage people.

Now here is my criticism of all Web 2.0 sessions, as promised at the beginning of this post: most, if not all, of the case studies are from large organizations with communications teams and resources that allow them to try things like video and daily engagement in social networks. But what about the small organizations that have one person responsible for marketing & communications, and that person is also the network administrator, web manager, and events coordinator? What can they do? We cannot solve their problem of limited resources, but we can find their successful case studies and present them to inspire other organizations like them, which is a majority of nonprofits. I’d be happy to moderate that panel next year in San Francisco.

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Platform is all the rage. Facebook is a platform — meaning, you can develop your own applications on top of their functionality. YouTube is now a platform. What this means is that you can do more embedding YouTube into your site, allowing people to upload video to your YouTube channel from your site and having people leave comments on your site that will end up in your YouTube comments. What this does not do it give you a white label service like Brightcove. You will still have the YouTube watermark and still be part of the YouTube community. So if you are committed to YouTube as an organization you could create landing pages that encourage your constituents to comment on your site, making the video more valuable back within the YouTube community (because comments are an indication to search of relevance).

Here’s the details from TechCrunch:

In case there was still any doubt that Google wants to use YouTube to host all the video on the Web, it’s announcement earlier today to broaden its APIs makes it clear that is its goal. Once again, instead of making it easier to search videos elsewhere, Google is making it easier to host videos on YouTube. Except that the new APis allow people to upload, watch, search, and comment on the videos on other Websites. The key here is that the videos themselves are hosted on Youtube’s servers. This brings Google back full circle to the initial strategy for Google Video, which originally required videos to be uploaded directly to Google in order to become indexed. YouTube is gradually replacing Google Video—that is where most people upload videos anyway—but getting as much video from the rest of the Web onto its servers allows it to do many more things with it than if it simply indexed the videos elsewhere. It can search them better and throw up ads against them.

Specifically, the new APIs allow Web developers to:

* Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
* Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
* Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
* Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
* Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software

YouTube is not just white-labeling its video-hosting infrastructure for other sites, devices, and desktop applications. It is offering video-hosting for free. This could prove highly disruptive to other video-hosting platforms such as Brightcove, Maven Networks (now part of Yahoo), and Move Networks. Partners already using the APIs include Animoto, Casio, Electronic Arts, Helio, KickApps, Slide, and TiVo. Yes, you can now watch YouTube on TiVo.

Of course, it is not exactly free. The videos will also be available on YouTube, where Google will make money from any associated ads. It is not clear how the ad revenue will be split, or even if it will be. There is nothing in the API that allows for a Website to insert their own ads. So that is a big question mark. (More on that after I speak with a YouTube exec later in today).

Update: YouTube product manager Jim Patterson confirms that there is no revenue-sharing built into the API, although he also points out that the API is open to YouTube Partners, who do share in the advertising dollars. He says:

“We are not introducing any fundamentally new way to monetize. Any video that is uploaded through our API is treated exactly as on YouTube.com. In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.

It is not a white-label service. We do offer a hosting service, but it is not a direct alternative to the companies that you mention. There are some big differences. It is a YouTube-branded experience. It is free. The price you pay for using it is you must participate in the YouTube community.”

In other words, YouTube feels that for the most part it is enough to direct traffic to third-party sites and let them tap into YouTube’s huge audience.

One thing I have learned about the Internet is the persistence of information. Once it goes up, it’s up. A fun thing to do is to go to the Internet Archive’s “Way Back Machine” which has 85 billion web pages archived from 1996. Here’s what Yahoo! homepage looked like exactly 10 years ago today.

A common story is one where a blogger posts something and then regrets it. Maybe they were too candid about their company or their boss. They take the post down. No one noticed the original post, and few people read the blog, but once they take it down lots of people are interested in what it says. Someone found it archived, reposted it, and now many more people saw it than would have originally if it was left up.

In today’s NY Times is an article about Facebook and the difficulty of getting your data removed. It’s a little complicated because when I send you a message that message is in my account and your account. So to really delete my entire life on Facebook would mean deleting data from many individual accounts.

The lesson is, be careful what you put online and maybe, just assume all is lost on the privacy front.

“It’s like the Hotel California,” said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account this fall. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
…
Facebook’s quiet archiving of information from deactivated accounts has increased concerns about the network’s potential abuse of private data, especially in the wake of its fumbled Beacon advertising feature.

That application, which tracks and publishes the items bought by Facebook members on outside Web sites, was introduced in November without a transparent, one-step opt-out feature. After a public backlash, including more than 50,000 Facebook users’ signatures on a MoveOn.org protest petition, Facebook executives apologized and allowed such an opt-out option on the program.

Tensions remain between making a profit and alienating Facebook’s users, who the company says total about 64 million worldwide (MySpace has an estimated 110 million monthly active users).

I had a conversation today with a major Jewish Federation about technology change. They are thinking about the future and wanted to look seriously into how changes in technology will impact their activities in the future. They are thinking beyond fundraising to service delivery, health care, and many other segments of community activity for which they are responsible. I tried to give them a framework in which to think about this kind of change and we discussed different models to explore and teach this subject.

The change taking place with technology isn’t simply about operational efficiencies. These changes in technology are creating fundamental changes in how people see their role, the community and their identity. In philanthropy, for example, the people-to-people connectivity of a Kiva is not a new concept, but the internet makes it possible on a new scale.

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Ariel Beery, one of a whole crop of young technology savvy Jewish thinkers and creative types. Walking in the footsteps of my friend Yossi Abramowitz, these folks are putting out cultural products and shaking the traditional tree with new ideas.

Ariel Beery’s ideas are included on a blog I have been reading called The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy. I was turned on to this blog by a friend and then given it to review as part of the Nonprofit Blog Exchange, which introduces nonprofit bloggers (like me) to other nonprofit bloggers through our work.

How do you think the web and technology change will impact identity? Is Facebook and MySpace a trend? a tool? or a fundamental shift in how people connect and communicate and create networks. Read Ariel Beery’s ideas here and let me know what you think.

We are working with our clients to engage constituents on sites like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. Why? Because we believe that increasingly we will be seeing engagement move to these social networking models and away from email.

Why? Because email… what’s the technical term?… sucks.

Here’s today’s headline for you:

NEARLY 95% OF EMAIL IS JUNK

Nearly 95 percent of the e-mail sent in 2007 has been “spam,” junk advertising loathed by its recipients, according to a report released Wednesday by a US Web security firm.

The amount of junk e-mail has skyrocketed despite a 2004 US CAN-SPAM Act that placed restrictions on sending unwanted messages and sanctioned penalties for “spammers,” according to California-based Barracuda Networks Inc.

Junk messages made up an estimated 70 percent of e-mail the year the act was passed, the Barracuda report indicates.

“The spam war is a continuous battle between spammers and security vendors,” said Barracuda chief executive Dean Drako.

“Security vendors now require 24-by-7 defense operations to continuously monitor the Internet for new spam trends and distribute new defensive solutions immediately.”

Barracuda said it based its findings on analysis of more than a billion e-mail messages received daily by its approximately 50,000 customers worldwide.

Spammers cunningly hide their identities by routing e-mails through other people’s websites, blogs or computers, according to Barracuda.

Link to the original story.

Most nonprofits are thinking about how to reach younger audiences. Here is an insightful video about their behaviors. Many of you have already seen this video called A Vision of Students Today, added to YouTube over a month ago and now the 94th most discussed video of all time on YouTube with over 6,000 comments. For those who haven’t, I recommend it (be patient through the first 90 seconds of premise).

I feel that we are on the verge of a lot of changes on the web. The Web 2.0 phenomena of portable content and user generated content is just the transition to something deeper. I don’t have a complete articulation of what that is yet, but two things got my attention recently that feel different. One is an ad format where characters in a video — in this case a Mac ad - seem to control a banner in another part of the page. That’s clever (though not terrible complex technically) and I feel it is a harbinger of more serious playing with web space to come.

The other item is about Facebook’s new ads. The interesting and even alarming thing is how Facebook is set to use your personal data (if you are on it) to deliver to you contextual ads that are generated from your activity off site. So, for example, I go to Blockbuster’s site and Facebook knows this and next time I am on Facebook I am getting Blockbuster promotions. You can read more about Facebook’s system here.

Here’s the new Mac ad format:

I diluted my own opinion in my last post. What I said I wanted was a way for people who are part of YouTube’s nonprofit program to be able to collect email addresses and not just donations. YouTube doesn’t do that. You will only get someone’s email if they actually donate. I then said, well… maybe it would be OK if they allowed you to connect like in Facebook.

The problem is, YouTube isn’t Facebook. While there are people who use YouTube as a pure social network, the majority of YouTube users are passive viewers of video. So connecting through the traditional social networking type of connections doesn’t have the impact on YouTube as it would on Facebook.

So, back to my original request. YouTube knows the email addresses of every registered user. With a single click, a user could give their information to the nonprofit, through YouTube. That would be a huge benefit to the nonprofit and I think it would prove to be much more valuable than the donation functionality they have given. It could be a double opt-in — meaning the individual would first have to click on the opt-in on the video page to give their name to the nonprofit, then they would get an email from YouTube giving them a link to confirm that this is what they wanted to do. In this way, no one would mistake their opt-in for spam.

We can thank Google for giving nonprofits access to Google Checkout. But a cynic might point out that Google is trying really hard to get people used to using Google Checkout and so this gift has a self-serving feel to it. Add to their functions the ability to really give the nonprofits something of value — a relationship with individuals on their own terms — then we could really celebrate the Google/YouTube Nonprofit initiative.