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?

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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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Take a look down at the bottom of this post.  See all those little icons?  You may know what they are for, you may not, but they are a feature that now appear on most blogs and an increasing number of Web sites.  The idea is that you can click one of those icons and, by doing so, submit a link to this post to the associated social networking site.  Why would you want to do this?  If you don’t know the answer to that question then I would suggest that there is no reason at all to do so.  But if the question you are pondering on is whether you should add these kinds of links to your Web site or blog, then by all means read on.

These icons are not merely shortcuts to the sites that the represent, they actually perform an action associated with the function of that site.  As such, they are more like little applications than links, per se.  I’d say that there are three main reasons to put an application-like shortcut to anything, social network or otherwise, on your website:

1. To give your visitors a quicker way to accomplish something they already do
2. To demonstrate that you are the kind of site that does this sort of thing
3. To educate your users and try to get them to start doing something about which didn’t already know

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I was having a conversation the other day with a friend of mine about “robots that tweet for you” when I mentioned that our company Beaconfire Consulting had successfully mastered the art of Tweeting without actually Tweeting. Please note that I didn’t say “robots that sweep for you”, but then again, someone is probably working on that in Japan or the MIT Media Lab.

For better or for worse, since the global tipping point of Twitter was reached, everyone wants to be part of the action. If Twitter hasn’t come across your online radar, it’s probably because you are living under the proverbial rock and are a Luddite battling online reality. On second thought, if you are on the internet reading this blog post, then you probably aren’t a Luddite, just a Twitter Luddite. That’s ok. The Twitter sphere of knowledge is small and can be transferred from one person to another in usually a few sentences similar to the 140 character tweets.

Below, I’ve elaborated substantially to show you that there is a way that individuals and organizations can use this tool to keep their relationships better informed. I recognize that the audience for our blog here at Beaconfire  mostly consists of individuals in the non-profit industry. This knowledge however can be used by most anyone in any industry which uses the internet to interact with their customers, clients, constituents, or partners. Businesses and Governments, please utilize this knowledge wisely and don’t be evil. (That means you Google!)

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If your organization is active on Facebook, you’re likely to be affected by some big changes they’re making to their Pages.  You may remember that last year, Facebook rolled out “new Facebook” to its users – a new interface with a different layout for homepages and profiles.  The new format emphasized the news feed and conversations, and introduced tabbed sections that resulted in cleaner, less cluttered profiles.

Facebook is now starting to roll out a similar update for Pages, the profile-equivalent for organizations and businesses.  (To summarize: profiles are intended specifically for individual people; pages are meant to be used by entities like businesses, non-profits, bands, etc.  Users can choose to become fans of pages they like, and receive updates from them.)  Pages are the main way that many non-profits maintain a presence on Facebook, and this new design means doing some rethinking about how best to use Facebook to reach your supporters.  Some of the most exciting updates affect how Pages can interact with their Fans – soon, your Page will be able to post status updates and share items in their fans’ news feeds, just like an individual user.  Overall, it makes Pages more viral – and don’t we all want to be more viral?

You can check out all the details at Inside Facebook.

What do these updates mean for organizations using the web for social change?  I think it means a lot of great new opportunities – and a new way of thinking about Facebook.  Learn more after the jump. (more…)

Another ASAE Technology Conference is in the books.  Last year, the subtitle could have been:  “Social Media.  Huhn.  Good God.  What is it good for?  We have NO idea (but we’d like to find out)!”  This year, SocMed was still the hot topic, but this time around, it was much less about, “What’s this Facebook thing I’m hearing about?” and more about, “Here’s a great case study in how our association is using Facebook to recruit students and young professionals.”

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Recently I launched my second facebook application called Feed the Pig and I figured I should take some time to share some of the lessons I learned and guidelines I’ve developed for making facebook applications. This post is the first of a series I plan to write in the coming weeks so stay tuned. A lot of the terminology that is used in this post is explained here.

• Keys to success
• Considerations and Cautions and Lessons Learned
• Structure/Pages (application Map)
• Permissions/Privacy
• Hosting
• Useful Links
• Useful Blog Posts

Keys to Success

Keep in mind why people tend to join facebook in the first place. Most users want to keep her/his friends and family updated on her/his lives. Users also want to keep in touch/keep track (perhaps stalk) one another. Facebook is a *social* network so you should design your application with that in mind. If your application doesn’t encourage users to share and interact with one another than maybe facebook is not to right place for it. Above all you need to make your application spreadable and continuously engaging.

• Make it easy for your current users to share with her/his friends
• Post your user’s actions to her/his feed.
• Design your application so that users can engage her/his friends, post things to either her/his friends profiles or her/his own, send requests to friends that will link her/him to the app.
• Don’t let your facebook application be just a passing fad. Many applications on facebook although exciting at first lose their luster after a user has tapped into all of the applications features.
• By updating your application with new features and content you can keep your users engaged and your application feeds going which is basically free advertising for your app.
• For non-profits, Facebook applications can be a great way to get users involved in a cause, provide her/him with a dashboard of tools to take action, and keep her/him posted about news and upcoming events. Email your users. If a user gives the application permission to change her/his status that is another great way to spread important updates about your cause. And again make sure you provide users with the tools to involve her/his friends.
• Here is very useful marketing post
  10 tips for releasing your Facebook application, and maximizing growth

Continue on to Considerations and Cautions after the jump…

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