For the first time in a while (or perhaps ever), my husband asked me for some ideas for a Web site. Excited to offer my professional advice, I started spouting ideas. “And then, to top it all off,” I said with a gleam in my eye, “you can make a widget.”

“A what?” he said?

“You know, “ I said, “A widget.”

But he didn’t know. I had ventured into that underworld of web jargon.

Most of us were introduced to the widget in our fourth grade math class: If one person at a factory can make 30 widgets in an hour, how many widgets can a factory that employs 3 people make in the course of a standard work day.

To those of us in the web business, a widget is a kind of mini-web application that can be easily distributed to any Web site. If you’ve got a petition campaign, and you can give your blog some code so that the campaign appears on their Web site, then you’ve got a widget.

But if our fourth grade widget factory can make 720 widgets in a day, it takes just a little bit longer for web developers to make just one. One mistake common mistake when it comes to widget design and development it to toss the widget aside as I kind of “mini-me” to the Web site, and assume it does not need much more in the way of design or development than the original application. But its tiny size can sometimes be a huge hurdle. Here are some things to consider when making a widget:

• Widgets come in all shapes and sizes. Make sure actions can fit in the space that a widget allows.
• Since your widget is a minified version of your larger web application, make sure you shrink any necessary elements (such as your logo).
• Put tracking in place so you can tell who your best promoters are.
• Widgets aren’t magical – if you want people to use your widget, you have to promote it.

Don’t treat your widget like an afterthought. If you put the time and effort into its layout, design, and functionality, you’ll have increased your reach faster than it takes three employees to make 500 widgets!

As of Wednesday, Old Spice is officially the king of viral marketing.  (They’ve even crowned themselves.) And we could learn a lot from them.

If you missed their amazing day of viral content, you might be living in a cabin in the woods (without WiFi), but ReadWriteWeb has a very good summary of their campaign. In a nutshell, they released a series of dozens of viral videos, produced almost in real-time, where their Old Spice Man, Isaiah Mustafa, responded personally to comments on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and bloggers.

There are a lot of factors you could point to as critical for their success, not all of which can be easily reproduced. For example:

• a great sense of humor (and the ability to laugh at themselves)
• an incredibly sexy, half-naked spokesman
• a now-legendary production team making ad-quality videos at a rate of 7 minutes per video
• lots of freedom from the corporate higher-ups

But what impressed me most, and the reason they became a trending topic on Twitter, is the personal attention they paid to their audience. Not everyone got flowers like Alyssa Milano.  But anyone who messaged Old Spice that day had a chance at their own video. You didn’t have to be a celebrity to get a few seconds of Mustafa’s personal attention.

Even if you didn’t get your own personal video response, you still felt like he might be talking to you. (And by “you,” I mean me.  I’m pretty sure he was talking to me.)

You can’t fake that kind of personal attention – but you can achieve it with a little hard work, no matter whether you’re a tiny non-profit or an international corporation. Maybe you don’t have the whole world paying attention to you.  But someone is paying attention, and you can pay attention right back at them. You don’t need a handsome spokesman, just a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or a volunteer with a phone.

Though, a handsome spokesman wouldn’t hurt.

Since it’s Friday, here are a couple more videos for you:

When you go to the theatre, it’s a given that the words of a playwright are being channeled through the characters on stage. Every line uttered is steeped in the identity of the person speaking, but placed there by the author, whose goal was to make a statement. It’s a fake-me-out that we all accept, a creation that we all buy into, because that’s the very nature of the thing, right?

So now, imagine Shakespeare was on Twitter.

Would he tweet as himself, or as one of the many personalities he created? Would the context of his 140 characters be different depending on “who” says it, even if the source is literally the same? And what about audience – how could he reach the right one given the many personalities he has to chose from?

Welcome of the murky and challenging world of creating a clearly branded and effective organizational identity online using Twitter as your vehicle.

In these days of social media madness, identity as a concept is already tenuous & intangible at best, yet more important than ever. Is it possible for an organization to express itself within the limited construct of Twitter without losing the context of its brand and reputation? Will the syntax and character limit make you look unprofessional? How can you tell is anyone is really listening, let alone caring? And if they are, how critical is it to be “on message” all the time?

It really boils down to this: Who the hell are you out “there”? Let’s turn to the immortal words of the Bard for guidance.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”- Hamlet
Should you even Tweet? If you want to make your brand more accessible, expand reach & leverage your audience, yes. If you’re “Keeping up w/ the Jones’s”, don’t bother.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”- Juliet
Select an @name that reflects the organization, not the person doing the tweeting. An identity crisis can negatively impact your brand & loose you audience.

“All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”- Jaques
Dress up the place! Design a background graphic that reinforces your brand and identity & create a custom icon that is more than just your logo, but not a personal photo.

“This above all: to thine own self be true.”- Polonius
Define a voice & stick to it. Consistency in tone paired w/an engaging style will gain you respect, credibility & above all else, followers. Your brand will thank you.

“Nothing will come of nothing.”- King Lear
Tweet regularly but be picky. If you only link to blog posts or RT people, no one will be interested in your tweets. Add value but don’t be afraid to jump in with both feet.

“Listen to many, speak to a few.”- William Shakespeare
Dedicate a staff member to monitor your account & do searches for interesting people & discussions where your organization can engage. Be deliberate in your choices.

“Brevity is the soul of wit”- Polonius
Think of Twitter as an exercise in focused expression. An elevator speech in 140 characters. Getting right to the point w/out fluff. (& URL shorteners can help alot).

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”- Macbeth
If you have nothing to say, don’t. Your tweets should interest your followers & reflect your brand’s skill with the medium. No one cares about your lunch order.

“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation” - Mowbray
It’s very easy to dilute your brand & damage your reputation on twitter by not being strategic or careful about future impact. Think before you tweet.

“O brave new world that has such people in’t!”- Miranda
Twitter is powerful tool & a great way to reach people directly so take advantage of it. Grow a loyal following, show the human face of your org & you will reap the benefits.

For those still skeptical about getting an organization’s point of view across on Twitter without looking it like a 13 year old’s text message, don’t be. It’s totally doable. How do you know?

Each one of the points above was 140 characters or less.

{end scene}

I’m into tech. But as I confessed in yesterday’s reflection, there are few pieces of tech I do not possess. One was a Twitter account.

But after NTC, that all changed.

I’ve sung variations on a theme of Twitter detractors: Who has the time for all this; Is anyone really so important that we need to know what they are doing all the time; The 140 character limit is destroying the English language.

But I was thoroughly impressed with the use of Twitter at NTC. Tweeters took notes, asked questions, and gave feedback during the sessions. This was extremely useful to the presenters. And you could get many of the highlights of panels you were not able to attend (check out the tweets of the Data, Data Everywhere panel). And as a presenter, I was able to easily response to post-presentation questions and load a few URLs.

So now I’ve jumped on board the Twitter express. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay on, but while I’m here, you can follow me at @mjgoldsmith.

Do you like Facebook?  I mean, do you really like them?

Think carefully about your answer.  Personally, I like Facebook a lot – even though I’m not always a fan of their decisions.

But if you’re not really a fan, it may not matter.

Facebook is changing how your supporters connect with your page.  Until now, Facebook users have been asked to “become a fan” of pages – showing that they are a fan of your organization, company, or brand.  Soon, they will instead get to “like” your page, and “liking” a page will grant the same connections and privileges as being a fan.  They’ll be able to “like” your ads as well.

This is a very clever move on Facebook’s part.  It might be too clever for their own good.  Think about everyday language: there’s a bit difference between “liking” something and being a “fan” of it.  For example:

I like the AFI Silver, my local independent movie theater.  I go there all the time.  I like them so much that I bought a membership.  I’m interested in their events, and invested in their success. Really, I’d call myself a fan.  Not coincidentally, I’m a fan of their Facebook page.

There are a lot of other things I like.  I like most of the movies I’ve seen recently (but I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of Up In The Air).  I like chocolate, and Godiva makes good chocolate (but I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of Godiva).  I even confess that I like Twinkies, that they taste good even though their ingredient list disgusts me (but I certainly wouldn’t call myself a fan of Twinkies).  I am not a fan of any of these things on Facebook.

Let’s add another layer of semantic complexity: “like” already has a meaning on Facebook.  I like the interesting link from my friend.  I like that my cousin posted how they’re having a good day.  I like the photos of another friend’s new puppy.  Liking is an easy, low-bar action with few long-term consequences.  I can like as many things as I want.  I will never be overwhelmed by liking too many things.  In Facebook, it’s always been safe to like things.

Combine these factors, and it seems likely that Facebook users will connect with many, many more pages when these changes roll out.  After all, they already know how to “like” items in their news feed, and “liking” a brand appears to be a lower bar than becoming a fan.  These two words have very different meanings in our minds, but in Facebook, they’re about to become synonymous.

This is good and bad.  It’s good for page owners, who will suddenly have a lot more connections (fans? likers?) on Facebook.  It will be easier to gain new supporters.  That’s a good thing.

(It’s good for Facebook, too – I don’t doubt they have a plan to make money by making pages more marketable.)

But it’s bad for all the users (unlike me) who don’t spend lots of time thinking about the implications of each action on Facebook. Some may not even notice the change, and they may be confused about why so many brands are suddenly showing up in their news feed, over and over – when all they did was “like” them.  Depending on how you message your Facebook supporters, that could be bad for you, too.  If your updates are too frequent, or not relevant to what these casual “likers” want to know, users may be confused and annoyed.

Facebook says they’ve dealt with this confusion by making “like” look different on a page or ad than it does on the news feed.  In fact, you can “like” an update from a page, and it means something completely different than “liking” the page itself.  I’m not sure I see the distinction – I’m still confused, despite having read explanations of how it will work, so how will the average user make sense of it?

It remains to be seen whether this is a good thing overall, but in the short term, I would recommend caution.  Watch for when Facebook makes the switch.  Watch your subscribe and unsubscribe rates.  Watch for negative (or confused) comments, too.  If you see increases in either, think hard about the messaging you’re using, and whether you can provide a gentle on-ramp for new supporters.  Unlike email, you can’t control which users see your content on Facebook.  If you see trouble signs, you may want to slow down your communications for a while to keep your newer, less fervent supporters engaged.

So, do you like Facebook’s decision?  Are you a fan of it?  Or would you rather “dislike” it (if only you could)?

Google Buzz is the new kid in social networking, and it hasn’t gotten a lot of love. It was rolled out a couple weeks ago with very little fanfare, showing up on Gmail users’ homepage one day.  The initial criticism was all about privacy controls, as Kesah explained last week.  To Google’s credit, they’ve moved quickly to address the most serious issues, and thus quieted a lot of the complaints.

But putting aside the rough edges and works-in-progress, Buzz has some potential.  What’s more, I think we need it, or something like it, in the social networking space.

Let’s look at two of the key players in this space: Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter is all about openness.  It’s got bare-bones features, with a robust API, so that most of the available functionality isn’t actually created by Twitter.  Many Twitter users don’t even use twitter.com to access their account, because so many 3rd-party tools give you that access.  It’s also almost entirely public.  While you can send private messages through Twitter, the whole point is public dialogue. There’s almost no personal data tied to Twitter; you can auto-tweet your content from other sources, but all your demographic info is separate.

Facebook, one could argue, is all about privacy, relationships, and data.  Their status update feature serves a similar purpose to Twitter, but can be limited to your circle of friends. They have very nuanced (and often hard to manage) privacy controls, and the assumed behavior for most users is that their content on Facebook is only available to their network of friends. Increasingly, Facebook is pushing itself as a marketing tool; their greatest value is the amount of your data that they own and can leverage for their advertisers and developers.  If Twitter is all about your public content, Facebook is all about your data and your network.

With Facebook’s recent updates to their privacy structure, a lot of people see them pushing for more monetizable content at the expense of user preferences.  Facebook makes no real secret about the fact that they are there to market to you. And as Facebook pushes harder on marketing and user data, I have to wonder if there’s a friendlier alternative.

I would love for Buzz to be that alternative.  It isn’t yet, but it has the potential. It’s clearly still under development, and I’m sure it will change as it grows, but there are promising signs that it could change into something good:

• It’s well integrated with other Google services.  Maybe the integration’s a little clunky at this point, but they’re making it easy to move between Buzz and emails, chat, RSS, and other media.
• It’s open, or will be.  Google has already announced their intention to make Buzz a “fully open and distributed platform for conversations”.
• There’s no marketing yet.  And while there inevitably will be, it seems likely that it will be context-based like the rest of Google’s advertising – not based on your personal data like Facebook ads.  There won’t be the same pressure to surrender up your personal information to the marketing gods.
• It’s easy to find your friends.  Odds are that the friends you communicate with over email are the same friends you’ll want to connect with on Buzz.  Now that Buzz no longer auto-follows all your contacts who use it, it could form the basis of a social network comprised of all the people you already interact with most closely.

Of course, Google needs to avoid some of the pitfalls other services have faced.  They need to figure out their privacy settings, to make them simple yet robust.  They also need to avoid becoming FriendFeed – it’s great that they made it easy to flow all your feeds into Buzz, but if no one uses it for the status update feature (which is at the core of Facebook and Twitter) then it’s a pale substitute.

Are you listening, Google?  If you are, I’d also like a lightning-fast internet connection, a flying car, and a pony…  you know, as long as you’re granting wishes.

What do you think? Is it crazy to think that Buzz could be the next, best thing in social networking?

After logging into my gmail account and getting an announcement to check out the new social networking feature Google rolled out, I was eager to find out what all the Buzz was about.  I clicked through to the link and to my surprise I was already following 31 people and 26 people were following me without ever activating a thing.  After poking around, I realized that whether you  like it or not the wealth of information Google knows about you is quickly becoming less and less private.  Before you get behind the wheel, I suggest you read on to understand the consequences of your buzz. (more…)

As the New Year begins and resolutions to quit smoking proliferate, Beaconfire is pleased to be working with the The American Legacy Foundation and their smoking cessation program – BecomeAnEX.org. The EX campaign is about re-learning your life without cigarettes and the EX site plays an important role in helping smokers learn their triggers and then maximize support from family, friends and the community of users at the EX community.

Recently, Beaconfire helped Legacy revitalize their website and migrate their users from Ning to the Elgg social networking software solution. Read more after the jump. (more…)

The future is here, and its name is Wave.

Not really… but the much anticipated Google Wave has arrived in “preview” mode. When Google says “preview,” they mean “we can’t call it beta yet”, and it’s available through a limited number of invitations to people who are willing to deal with lots of bugs in order to get an early peek at this tool.

The idea behind Wave is that email has been around, mostly unchanged, for a long time – so Wave purports to be what email would have been if it were developed using today’s technology and for today’s web user. Not everyone feels that Google’s description of Wave is accurate, however. Daniel Tenner blogged recently that Wave is not communications 2.0 at all, saying:

“Is Wave the next Twitter? Nope. Is it the next Facebook? Nope. Is it going to replace Instant Messengers? Possibly, in some circumstances, but not any time soon.. I believe this is partly Google’s fault: they released Wave to geeks and hackers and social media folks first. But Wave is not a geek/hacker tool, or a social media tool, it’s a corporate tool that solves work problems (more on that later). On the other hand, they never claimed it would be a Facebook replacement or a Twitter killer.”

Confused yet? Check out a new collaborative user manual, read Lifehacker’s introduction, or Google’s hefty hour-long demo (below), and you’ll have a good idea of what it’s all about.

(more…)

A couple of months ago, I was frustrated with several academic journal websites which did not have the necessities of web 2.0 sharing features which can make their site useful to the new generation of scholars.  The suggestions I gave centered around adding “share this” or “add this” functionality that would allow site visitors to add a link to their delicious bookmarks, share it with their friends on facebook or twitter, or possibly send to a friend via email.

These changes are institutional and my message mostly fell on deaf ears. One did get back to me and asked if I could help them as part of their student volunteer staff. We’ll cover that in another article.

The problem of adding such functionality is that it can be a chore if the content itself is not ready for sharing. For example, PDFs are never good material to link to on facebook, because they won’t create a nice looking story feed item. Pages that don’t have images won’t look nice either. Apart from cosmetic errors which can be a hurdle to success in implementing these simple tools, time and effort are always a problem for busy organizations.

There is an easy solution provided by wibiya. They offer a way for anyone that publishes content to add an interactive web 2.0 toolbar which sits at the bottom of your webpage no matter where a user is on your site. Similar to the “Start” bar in Windows and the “Apple” bar in Mac OS, this utility is very useful.
Although it integrates with Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and any website well, the best feature I believe is in it’s ability to create a Facebook community.

What does Wibiya say about itself?

“Wibiya enables blogs to integrate the most exciting services, applications and widgets of their choice into their blog through customized web-based toolbars.
Our platform offers a one-stop solution for integrating, managing and tracking third-party applications.

Currently we offer a fixed set of tools such as creating a blog community via facebook connect,
enabling twitter alerts on your blog and enabling post navigation but there is a lot to wait for as we will be adding more and more application through time.”

I hope you have time to evaluate if this is a useful tool for your organization. It could save you more time and money than you expect.

Announced last year, Facebook Connect heralded an architectural shift for Facebook developers, away from the thousands of insipidly cute notification apps and toward a sophisticated way of wiring up full-fledged websites with social actions.  Here’s the proposition: your web developer adds a bit of javascript to your website and you can allow users to post your website actions to their walls, or update their status, or many of the other actions they would take directly within Facebook.

The real power of the system becomes evident when you “connect” profile information on your site with Facebook, allowing information to flow through to your site with a button click instead of a lengthy sign-up form.   The barrier-of-entry for all aspects of user profiling is reduced — people that wouldn’t bother to sign up for an account on your site at all can still be served personalized information and tracked demographically, and people who would sign-up get their information pre-populated and connected to their social network of choice (assuming that’s Facebook, of course).  In a way, it’s similar to the effect that Amazon Payments or PayPal has in merchandising and micropayments — people are more likely to actually check-out with their cart if they can use a name they trust and don’t have to type in their name, address and credit card information over and over again.

The benefits to all parties seemed pretty clear: the user experiences simplified profile management, Facebook serves as a defacto “social action” engine and drives traffic back to its site,  and your website gets data it may not have had otherwise.  But things aren’t that simple.  For instance, who owns the information about the profile that Facebook provided to your website? What exactly can you store from Facebook, and at what point is that data part of your site’s profile and not the users’ Facebook profile?

It’s not a trivial point.  It turns out that even major site Digg.com, the example site Facebook shows a screenshot of as a Connect site in it’s Facebook Connect announcement post,  didn’t know where the line was.  As the writers at AllFacebook.com point out, the Facebook TOS are muddy: different rules about what data can be stored and cached under different circumstances; conditions for people removing or disconnecting from your app; frequent changes due to new functionality and occasionally, public outcry.  Compound that with the fact that it’s near impossible for Facebook to police the requirements among the many sites using Connect, and there is a lot of confusion between what a Connected website wants to do, should do, and can get away with doing.

As websites link up with Facebook Connect more and more, the lesson for prospective integrators is to plan for the implications of the TOS on your data collection and make sure you aren’t left in the lurch if it doesn’t match up with Facebook’s rules.  A decent back-up plan includes OpenSocial, Twitter and maybe a little bit of praying.

Odds are, you have heard about all the amazing Non Profit panels being proposed for South by Southwest interactive 2010, and your vote has been courted over and over again. After 2 weeks of this (with one more to go), odds are even higher that Panel-Picker fatigue has hit an all time high and the last thing you want to see are the letters s-x-s-w in that order.

Rather than hear from us about our amazing panels yet again, we thought we would share some comments from the sxsw community. The people are talking, and we invite YOU to join the conversation. Panel picker voting ends on Friday, Sept 4th so don’t delay – time is running out to weigh in on these great panel ideas, like these folks have:

Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0

Ted Fickes, The Wilderness Society
Definitely an interesting set of questions. Do people need or even want most/many organizations when there are local and/or highly focused or short-term projects out there and ready made ways to raise $ for them?

Sundeep Ahuja, The Extraordinaries
These days I see a lot of non-profits and cause oriented organizations borrowing pages from Kiva.org – from fundraising to marketing, Kiva.org has almost become an example of a “next-generation” non-profit. There’s something about the way Kiva.org embraces transparency, operations, and engagement which has made it a phenomena. WRT fundraising specifically, in a way Kiva is doing what Radiohead did when they launched their album for free and asked fans to pay what they wished; at the point of transaction, Kiva says “hey, we’re offering this service for free, but if you wish to help us do what we do, please pitch in” — and it’s working. I for one am very curious to see if this model (and the associated transparency and required operational efficiency) might work for other organizations as fundraising is one of the biggest challenges non-profits face.

Skylar Woodward, Kiva
I’m really looking forward to this discussion! We spend so much time engrossed in our model we don’t often get to step outside of Kivaland and consider how this is affecting online philanthropy at large. The intimacy and transparency of a Kiva loan certainly comes at a cost. To what extent is it reasonable to expect other organizations to correlate every dollar to good done in the world? Are we setting donor expectations too high or is this the reality of technology-enabled world driven by postmodern values? If this is the future, how do we scale operations, especially on a non-profit budget, to keep accurate data flowing between donors and recipients?!? At Kiva we’ve certainly had to find the balance between perceived impact and explaining what’s actually going on under the code and on the ground.

Cynthia Greenwood
This is a great idea for a panel. One of my concerns about these new online giving models is whether big donors will now choose to go online to fund loans to entrepreneurs of their choosing versus giving donations that can be used at the organization’s discretion to support the most needed programs and operations. Perhaps this could be addressed by the panel.

Milo Sybrant, Amnesty International
This discussion proves to be an interesting one because it raises important questions about the ethics of direct-to-beneficiary fundraising when the human lives are involved. It’s one thing to make a gift to cover the costs of snacks for children in a New York City school (as is possible through orgs like DonorsChoose). But it’s a different proposition to ask someone to make a contribution in order to get a specific political prisoner released from detention in Iran.

Joe Baker, Care2
This should be an interesting panel. It is fairly straightforward to see how the Kiva/DonorsChoose models of micro loans and direct donations can apply to/possibly supplant organizations that primarily serve as bundlers, vetters, and conduits for individual projects and direct assistance. I’m curious to see how the panelists feel the model can apply to other spheres such as advocacy groups.

Can Double-Clicking Change The World? Slacktivism 101

Robert Rosenthal,Volunteer match
Have to say, there’s a delicious irony to a bunch of people in a room watching other people talk about other people slacking. Causes in Facebook ($10 million from 240,000 causes, or $41 per cause) has been a convenient target for slacktivism charges because it’s big and they’ve been open about their numbers, but I think it’s clear our communities need a better model than “click for change”. At some point, individuals need to donate either real time or real money in order to make a difference. Should be a good panel.

Jean Russell, Nuture.biz
Really great issue to debate. i hope we can talk about what has traction without a lot of action and what looks sexy, but doesn’t get much traction – from both an activist org view as well as a contributor/slacker view.

Kiva Wilson, Kaboom.org
I’m stoked to see that SXSW has finally decided to take on this most worthy of topics. Slacktivism opens SO many doors for causes and volunteer/service opportunities. I’m eager to hear what the panelists have to say on the matter.

Michael Cooper
This is a great topic. Non-profits are doing some of the best work in the social media sphere – experimenting where others fear to tread. Big projects have big barriers to entry. If non-profits are to generate mass action, they must use these forms of media to have low barriers of entry to start and encourage folks to take the next step. Should be a great discussion.

Kathryn Lusk
I love this topic – it’s exciting to think about the potential for “slacktivism” to inspire real live activism!

Data, Data, Everywhere: Drowning in a Sea of Analytics

Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation
I think it’s really important to pick the data you track carefully! There is so much to choose from. I hope this panel gets picked!

Jason Cooper, Kaboom.org
As someone who used to compile monthly reports in excess of 50 pages on everything you could imagine related to analytics, I’m very interested in hearing about Question #9. (“What stats can I ignore? “)

Joseph Kelly, Infochimps
Beaconfire does great work. Learning about actionable metrics is a metalesson that can be applied in all sorts of other fields. It will be interesting to see what you guys come up with.

Yoga For Social Networkers: Striking The Right Pose

Renee Hamilton, Operation Smile
I love this idea and the yoga tie in–it seems like it will benefit both newbies and experienced social media geeks who are always look for ways to stretch our time and talents and new positions for us to get into!

Ed Schipul, Schipul: the Web Marketing Company
Great to see Beaconfire, a strong supporter of the non-profit community and a firm that walks-the-talk, representing at SXSW. Not sure I can do the interactive portion of the presentation…. oooooh shiny! … oh wait, what was I writing about? Oh ya, I am in favor of any panel that helps us naturally limit our ADD tendencies and gain focus. This is timely for non profits, for businesses and for ourselves during the Great Recession!

It’s Not All About You: Respecting Your Users

Raffi Darrow, Rdesign inc
I wish everyone knew this: your site isn’t there for you, it’s there for your users!

Thank you for your support! Panel selection decisions will be made in October so watch this space – hopefully we will have some good news to report.

If you’re an avid follower of this blog, you may have noticed that the people at Beaconfire are full of great ideas, and not shy about lettin’ em loose on the world. From social media to design to web metrics to just general non profit tech guru-ness, we leave no stone unturned. But there is one thing we have not yet accomplished – and for that we need your help, dear readers.

Driven by our desire to share what we are most passionate about on a larger stage, we have submitted five innovative, thought provoking and exciting panel ideas for consideration at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, TX this coming March. Among the overwhelming landscape of 2210 other great ideas in the sxsw panel picker (a crowdsourcing approach to selecting conference content, which counts for 30% of the overall decision-making) we bravely stand toe to toe, competing with the rockstars, the uber geeks and other movers and shakers in the tech world. South By, we are Beaconfire! Hear us ROAR!

Helen Reddy-inspired bravado aside, in order to be able to present these great ideas anywhere outside of our own conference room, we desperately need you, our dedicated community, to help us. So now we humbly ask that you not only cast a “thumbs up” vote for our panels, but also post your insightful comments on each entry to let the sxsw “deciders” see how timely, thrilling, brilliant and ya know, really cool , our ideas are. You will have to make an account first, but we know that won’t hold you intrepid souls back. Forge onwards, brave readers, and let your voice be heard! Without further ado (or any additional hyperbole) – our panels:

Yoga for Social Networkers: Striking the Right Pose
Organizer & Speaker: Amadie Hart
There are hundreds of social networks, but only one you. Instead of overextending yourself, you need to bring focus on the important things and let go of the rest. Learn how to center your social media practice and balance your online activities. Bring your yoga mat! (don’t miss the video preview!)

Will Kiva Kill your non profit? Donations 2.0
Organized by Shiloh Stark, Jo Miles and Michael Cervino
Speakers: Skylar Woodward, Director of API development at Kiva; Ian Scott Haisley, OptINnow.org, Milo Sybrant, Amnesty International
Connecting donors directly to the beneficiaries of contributions is a game-changing fundraising strategy. Will traditional nonprofits need to adopt new technologies and fundraising models as donors demand greater accountability for their funds? This vibrant, moderated discussion will include representatives from Kiva, OptINnow, and 2 national advocacy organizations.

Can double-clicking change the world? Slacktivism 101
Organized by Eve Simon & Ali Cherry
Speakers: Jacob Colker, CEO of The Extraordinaries; Premal Shah, President of Kiva; and Jason Cooper, Online organizer for Kaboom.org and at least one other rockstar “surprise guest” to be named later.
Sl’ack-Ti-vism. Noun. Taking action for social change without lifting a finger. As the latest technology allows people to “engage” from their computers/phones rather than getting their hands dirty IRL, will this impact the future of volunteerism? A panel of experts will debate the pros & cons of couch potato activism.

Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a sea of Analytics
Organizer & Speaker: Marissa Goldsmith
A Web site gives a nonprofit access to data that makes old school direct marketers salivate. But many organizations find themselves getting bogged down in producing graphs every month, obsessing over drops in pageviews, throwing their hands up on the air, and deciding they don’t have enough resources to maintain this kind of analytics analysis. Stop obsessing about the small stuff, and start learning about creating a goal-oriented, actionable analytics plan that can help your Web site thrive.

It’s not all about you: respecting your users
Organizer & Speaker: Jo Miles
Google practices it with AdWords. Facebook learned it the hard way. The truth is, your site isn’t there for you or your board; it’s there for your users. All the clever marketing tricks in the world won’t win their loyalty if you don’t give them a little respect.

Of course, not to be all “Me me me” about this, we also kindly ask that you share some panel picker love with these other great sxsw sessions, proposed by non profit tech rockstars, social media visionaries and really, really smart people:

Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change
Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog

Non-Profits and Social Media: Not the Usual Suspects
David Neff, American Heart Association

The Real Housewives of Social Media
Jordan Viator, Convio

Advanced Brand Monitoring: Let the Haters Hate
Carie Lewis, The Humane Society of the United States

Competition > Innovation > Change: Examining Competitions For Social Change
Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared

Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness?
Panelists include: Amy Sample Ward, Danielle Brigida and Stacey Monk

Evolution, Creation and Extinction (of the organization)
Ted Fickes, The Wilderness Society

Handheld Awesome Detectors: Sustainable Apps
Rachel Weidinger, Rachel Weidinger Consulting

Building an Employee Platform for Social Change
Patrice Thramer, Nike, Inc

Doing More With Less: How Not-For-Profits Leverage Technology for Change
Nancy Lublin, DoSomething.org

Digital Marketing for Non-Profits
Amy Seidenwurm, LA Phil

A Different Documentary: Online Storytelling & Social Change
Boyd Neil, Hill & Knowlton Canada

The Socially Conscious Geek: Makin’ Money While Doin’ Good
Leif Utne, Zanby

SMS And Social Change: Lessons From Senegal
Terra Weikel, UNICEF

We all look forward to representin’ the non profit sector in Austin this spring, and can’t wait to see everyone in The Beacon: Lounge with a Conscience again. (details to come – watch this space!)

It starts innocently enough. A blog post here or there. You sign up for Facebook to see what everyone is talking about. Perhaps you even started Twittering, because if Ashton Kutcher could do it, anyone could do it.

Next thing you know, you’re an information junkie, obsessively checking your accounts for your next fix, broadcasting the play-by-play of your daily activities and thoughts to anyone who will follow you, and realizing that you would have forgotten what your partner/spouse/kids look like if you hadn’t posted the photos from your vacation to Flickr.

Stop.

Put down the iPhone.

And breathe.

While social media presents a valuable toolset for you and your organization to stay connected with a far-flung network of friends, family, supporters, members, and advocates, you must find a way to center yourself before you become overwhelmed. It’s no longer just a question of work/life balance — this has become work/life/social network balance.

We have just the thing to help you find your way. For South by Southwest interactive this spring, I have proposed a session called “Yoga For Social Networkers: Striking The Right Pose” suggesting that the ancient practice of yoga can help you find the social networking balance you seek. But we need your help to make it a reality.

With the help of a real Yogi, this mind-expanding hour will offer practical yoga-inspired solutions like:
• Shedding your tendency toward multitasking and be fully present when you participate in social networks.
• Finding balance between the online and offline world, and resist the temptation to be checking your networks 24/7.
• Realizing your limitations to avoid overextending yourself.
• And, most importantly, setting your intentions clearly from the beginning by understanding what you are trying to achieve and working toward that goal.

A preview of some of the “poses” you will learn:

By the end of the session, we hope you’ll discover how to get more accomplished in the same amount of time, that your friends and followers are finding more value in what you put out there, and perhaps you’ve even increased your social network flexibility a bit.

So start your “practice” today by voting for (and leaving comments on) our Yoga for Social Networkers panel entry.

Your karma will thank you.

The question one finds asking themselves before taking any task of considerable effort is  whether they really want to do it. This past weekend, I exerted some effort to get myself from Washington D.C. to Cambridge, MA to attend a conference. The topic of discussion was Elgg. What is Elgg and why did I go to Cambridge? Read on and discover why.

Last week, it was brought to my attention that Elgg–an open source Social Networking Platform–was holding a conference on Social Media for Education, and a more specific conference on Elgg. I know and understand the needs of Education that the promise of Social Media can bring. I was very glad someone decided to bring people together to talk about it. Since it was on Friday and I was at work that day, I couldn’t make it. Thankfully, I did make the second conference on Saturday.

At ElggCamp Boston 2009, I was able to see the need for the "Social Networking Platform".Speakers made it very clear that Elgg was not for the person that needed to put up a generic social network to link people together. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter do that just fine.

This morning, I read an email with an interesting question from my colleague Jo:

I don’t get this.

http://summerofsocialgood.com/

It looks like this is a huge, well-funded, well-organized program.  It also shows that someone (say… Mashable) is really, really invested in showing that you can do fundraising with social media.

But aren’t they going about it backwards?  I thought “social media for social good” meant rallying people on social media who care about your particular cause, not rallying people who care a lot about social media and then challenging them to support “social good” in general…

They’ve got the big name organizations, but the campaign’s not about them at all.  Or am I missing something?

Very astute question. What is going on here? What is Summer for Social Good really about?

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Confession time. When I started designing for the web nearly 14 years ago, I pretty much made it all up as I went along. Brave souls all, we ventured out bravely into the wilderness, hoped for the best and called our mistakes “lessons learned”. Most of us survived to tell the tale, emerging stronger, smarter and a little more acclimated to this brave new world. Others just grew gills, but that’s a story for another time.

As the web industry has matured, it fascinates me that processes and best practices have developed to the degree that all of us are singing a similar song, even though we may not have all gotten the same memo. Working in the web these days feels like spending time on the Galapagos Islands. Evolving to fit our environment, we have somehow still retained the elements that make us all unique without sacrificing forward progress and growth. I always knew Darwin was a designer at heart.

So combining the passion I have for design with my desire to share what I have learned the hard way about the ways of the web, on occasion I stick my hand in the lion’s mouth and go talk to people about it.

Sharing the stage at OneWorld.net’s Web Design for Non Profits workshop with Mckenzine Lock (Senior Communications Manager, Communications and Outreach at Women Thrive Worldwide) and Shirley Sexton (Director of Interactive Marketing & Fundraising at See3 Communications) was further proof that we have learned how to speak the same language without sacrificing our own point of view. Exploring the challenges facing non profits on the web these days, we tackled the same subject from 3 different angles: as a designer who creates visual environments to support an organization’s complex ecosystem, a client who just survived a redesign rooted in best practices, and a marketing evangelist who lives and breathes this stuff every day.

And wouldn’t you know, without comparing notes or peeking at the other’s presentation ahead of time, we shared a cohesive message with our audience. Amazingly, we empowered these non profit professionals in their pursuit of a great new website for their organization, transformed their ability to achieve their goals, and left them excited to take their mission to a larger audience online.

Ain’t evolution fun? Check out my presentation here and tell us what you think!

Online video has become an increasingly popular tool used by non-profits to raise awareness. If you’re using video online and need some inspiration, or just want to see what others are doing, take a look at these non-profits who are educating and getting people involved through the use of video.

Interactive Campaigns

These campaigns encourage visitors to get involved by recording and contributing their own videos or photos:

• 24 Hours for Darfur has collected over 900 personal video appeals from celebrities, politicians, Darfurians, and citizens around the world. The campaign aims to strengthen Darfur advocacy and enable individuals to send their appeals to political leaders.
• Witness.org – The Hub is an interactive community for human rights, where you can upload your own content or watch, comment on and share content from others. They also provide a great Video Advocacy Toolkit.
• Stand Up 2 Cancer asked visitors to “Submit your own picture or video and tell the world what you stand for! Cancer affects all of us, what are you standing for?” and used the submissions to create this video.

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Recently, we relaunched an environmentally focused service learning program for the Wildlife Conservation Society on the Ning community platform. Teens for Planet Earth launched at the beginning of April (ok, I guess that isn’t so recent!) on Ning after beginning its life as a typical minisite some years ago. This project entailed migrating the existing site, enhancing the design and setting up the new community features.

For this client and project, Ning was a perfect choice, offering both the out of the box community features that a teen audience would expect with enough customization to satisfy the needs of the organization. Oh, and the price was right… just a few dollars to remove some ads and customize the domain name.

There have been discussions and comments about Ning’s value, ethics, and change in business model (this is just one of many posts out there). We’ve been monitoring this debate for a while, as we have a few clients on Ning. Ultimately the choice for this client was that Ning’s offering was more consistent with their needs, goals and situational realities. For another of our clients, the risks and impacts of working with Ning during their transition from social network platform provider to social network is more troubling.

Thankfully there are growing numbers of social networking tools sets – many free/open source, some commercial and costly, some good, and some bad. Seems like lately we’ve been asked to highlight the pros/cons of the various options, as more of our clients than ever consider whether to roll out their own social network. Products we’ve already reviewed include (in no particular order): Telligent Community Server, The Port, Higher Logic, Elgg, Grou.ps, KickApps, Collective X, and Pluck. Looks like the number of tools continues to grow and until a leader emerges, I have a feeling we’ll be asked to help clients make smart choices as part of our Software Evaluation service offering.

A few days ago, my colleague wrote about the effectiveness and Return on Investment (ROI) of adding social networking links to your site . Are your users clicking them? Are they driving traffic to your site? In reading his post, I could see years of frustration in implementing these kinds of share links. There’s so much to do – figuring out the link styles, getting the right icons, picking the right networks, changing out the networks when one becomes passe and another comes into vogue. It’s enough to make anyone ask, "are you sure you really want this?"

Luckily, the days of this kind of implementation being limited to the domain of the tech-savvy few are over. Thanks to services like AddThis and ShareThis , adding this kind of functionality on your site can be a simple half-hour operation. It’s important to consider the pros and cons of using these kinds of free services (their branding will appear on your site, limited customization and integration, the service getting your data, and the possibility that they could go out of business). But if you can stomach the cons, there’s no reason you can’t easily implement a social networking bar on your site.

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