“Fifty-seven percent of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so on a typical day,” according to the Pew Internet and American Life project, which published its first major report on the subject this week.
You read numbers like that and it’s no wonder why so many nonprofit organizations are venturing into the wild world of YouTube. Here at Beaconfire we’ve helped a number of clients create new video for the web, or adapt their TV-oriented videos to display on the web.
Here are three quick tips for understanding the difference between TV and web video.
YouTube videos should be short. Producers should aim for about three minutes. One minute is even better. If you have a longer piece that was originally prepared for TV, give serious thought to having a videographer edit it down into short, self-contained pieces.
YouTube videos have a long shelf life. Some of the videos we’ve helped clients post continue to rack up impressive numbers of views and build the brand long after the campaign in question has wound down. Check back on your YouTube video every few weeks and make sure you update your reports on views.
YouTube offers a tradeoff. If you host the video yourself, you may be able to insert clickable links into the video, so viewers can move straight from the video to your donation form, petition, etc… That’s good. But if you host the video yourself, you won’t be able to tap into YouTube’s huge built-in audience. That’s bad.
I’ve been seeing demos of this technology posted around the ‘net for a while now, but Microsoft’s announcement of their new “Surface” technology brings it a lot closer to a consumer market. I initially wanted to post this simply because I thought this technology was really cool, but in thinking about it more I couldn’t help thinking about how this may affect web site designs in the future.
The technology, in a nutshell (see the videos below for a larger bowl of nuts), is a way to allow people to interact directly with “objects” on a table-top computer screen. The new advancement that makes this exciting is “multi-touch” (the ability to touch an object in several places at once, or to touch and interact with multiple objects at once.
As I watch the demos of purchasing and paying for meals at restaurants, sorting and arranging photos, and using maps, I start thinking about how on-line shopping carts, community networking sites, and even the concept of a web site itself could be affected by this kind of technology.
We have already had to adjust how we think about planning and building websites to use newer, dynamic, web technologies. How much further will this re-tooling have to go when users are demanding the ability to remix an entire website to their liking. OK, so that’s pretty extreme and arguably not something that will necessarily result in a friendly user experience, but what about this:
Take a search result of action alerts, draw a circle with your finger around several of the results to group them together by keyword or tag, and then drag them all to where your Wi-Fi phone is sitting on the table-top. The results are automatically cused to create a “related” RSS feed to your phone based on those results. Go to another site and do the same thing. Then call up your contact list on the table-top (pulled from your phone, still just sitting there on the table, not even plugged in to anything) and send your new RSS feed (or selected items from it) to selected people from your contact list.
We’re probably talking about at least 5 years before this stuff is priced for even first-adopter users; currently pricing of around $10,000, and functionality is geared toward businesses like Hotels, Restaurants, and Casinos. I’ve no doubt, though, that some form of this will be in general use in homes as soon as it’s affordable.
Take a look at the videos — Especially the third video on the Microsoft Surface site about paying for meals at a restaurant — and you’ll see what I mean. In this paradigm, devices like phones, PDAs, laptops, credit cards, and even web pages, become simple buckets to move things to and from. The ability to do this simply by placing the objects on the table is what makes it all so amazing.
I guess a big question is, will people want to browse the web on a table-top, or is the vertical screen we all use already going to stay with us? And don’t let’s even start with accessibility issues with these devices! A lot of cool potential, but a lot of potential pitfalls as well. Isn’t that how it usually is?
There was a nice feature story in the Washington Post metro section on neighborhood listservs — Offering Both the Nice and the Nasty, E-Mail Lists Surge in Usage. The reporter cited Pew studies which have found that more than half of all Internet users are subscribed to one or more lists, up from just about a third in 2001. The reporter also noted that listservs were displacing traditional communications vehicles such as the home owner association newsletter and the community center bulletin board.
These findings didn’t surprise us here at Beaconfire, we play close attention to how nonprofit professionals use listservs. What did catch our eye was the size of some of the neighborhood lists. More than 2,000 subscribed to the Chevy Chase listserv, more than 5,000 subscribed to the Cleveland Park listserv. Those are big numbers!
OK, these are affluent neighborhoods in the nation’s capital — but you can bet that similar lists have popped up all across the country.
The thing about listservs is that they attract the outspoken and engaged residents of the neighborhood. For any nonprofit sufficiently local to legitimately participate in the lists, they offer rich opportunities to engage the community in the organization’s work, dispel rumors, and promote events and services. They also offer an opportunity for an overzealous staffer to make a pest out of themselves or inadvertanly brand a good cause as an unwelcome spammer in the eyes of the community.
Local homeless shelters, foodbanks, thrift stores, and park watchdogs should sign up immediately!
Blogs have long been great advocacy tools, but thanks to widgets they are the hot new fundraisers. So far we (at Beaconfire) have worked on two widget campaigns and have been keeping track of a few others; here are a few things we??ve learned:
Bloggers read blogs so if your organization does not have a blog, it may be worth it to set one up. There is no quick and easy way to reach bloggers and gain their trust. We found that the earlier you initiate a ??Blogger Relations? outreach, the better. There may also be bloggers laying dormant on your listserve, don??t be afraid to ask if they are there!
If you are not sure where to find bloggers that care about your issues, your site stats can yield some leads. Review the list of search engines and sites that refer visitors to your site; chances are they are coming from blogs or news source that bloggers use. If your site stats are too cumbersome, Technorati is also good place to start.
As flattering as it is to have BlogRaisers as far away as England, to keep them happy you will need to be able to process donations in multiple currencies. If you can??t, state that clearly on the campaign??s landing page.
Keep in mind that MySpace and some other sites restrict the use of some widgets, so try to create an alternative to your widget. Looking for widgets? Six Degrees, ChipIn, Kintera, Convio, GetActive and SpringWidgets are good starts. Happy BlogRaising!
Step right up! Place your bids on this fine movie poster, 90% of the proceeds go to Beaconfire client and (generally fine folks) the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation! No need to click over to eBay and navigate through their system, you can place your bid right here on Beaconfire’s blog!
That’s right — online auction powerhouse eBay has jumped into the widget game, making it possible for anyone with a blog or website page to run eBay transactions right off their website. That’s a fundraising opportunity for nonprofits, many of which have struggled to alert their supporters to their auctions. It’s also a PR opportunity for the clever ones. Offer something provocative for sale and see if the blogosphere buzzes about it!
Of course, this new service debuted today, so it’s all potential and no track record. But, it’s another piece of evidence that regular folks with websites can do a lot more for the nonprofit organizations they support than click yes on canned action alert language or punch their credit card into a donation form.
Hat tip to Techcrunch for breaking this interesting news.
Here at Beaconfire, we’re as excited as anybody about Web 2.0 — but the good-old-fashioned listserv is the online community of choice for those with serious activist inclinations, at least environmental activists.
That’s the conclusion of a study we’re releasing today called Network of Networks: Email Lists, Nature Protection, and Pollution Control. After monitoring 64 environmental listservs for about six months and surveying the subscribers, we found that these groups are hotbeds of civic activism and social networking. Subscribers reported extraordinarily high participation in a wide variety of behavior such as writing Congress, calling radio talk shows, attending public hearings, and giving speeches — and they said they placed high value on the listservs’ role in helping them stay in touch with peers.
Of particular note for nonprofit organizations, concerned citizens formed many of these groups on their own initiative without any assistance or participation from a formal organization, and participants on most of these lists pay little attention to the activities of the national environmental groups. Those national organizations that figure out how to overcome this gap and successfully engage with these outspoken citizens stand reap some big rewards.
Beaconfire’s constantly thinking about new technologies and techniques for outreach to our client’s advocates, donors, volunteers, staff, etc. Typically, though, we’re focussing on real-world consitutents. I must admit I haven’t given much thought, until today, about outreach to virtual constituents. An eye opening blog posting by Nedra Weinreich changed that. Nedra posts her interview with John Anderton, who is responsible for bringing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Second Life (the virtual world with nearly 5 million “residents”). What are other nonprofits doing in Second Life?
Commonwealth Island in Second Life consists of a “rugged, coniferous island housing several nonprofits, including Greenpeace and ACLU”
There’s an education campaign to help end the genocide in Darfur in “Camp Darfur”.
Second Life has a very helpful Non-Profits Wiki page with all sorts of resources that are just begging to be explored. (I can feel it sucking me in…) And TechSoup has an interesting interview with 3 nonprofits (Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York, Global Kids, and Amoration) who are all operating in Second Live. So much to learn, so little time…
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both helped legitimize online social networking for serious purposes by baking collaborative opportunities into the core of their campaign — inviting supporters to friend-raise, fundraise, and even express themselves in their own words under the candidate’s banner.
There’s a sharp partisan divide over the wisdom of all this, it seems. Pete Cashmore is reporting over on Mashable that Illinois State Senator Matt Murphy (R-27, Palatine) is seeking to flat out ban social networking sites in libraries, schools, etc… This move comes on the heels of Ted “Tubes” Stevens related efforts in DC. I doubt either of these gentlemen will be mimicking Obama and Clinton’s campaign strategies for the 08 elections.
So Republicans, I’m not sure what you have against online social networking, but here’s a proposition for you. You keep Fox News and Druge Report, and leave YouTube and all those other undisciplined social networking sites to the Democrats. Each party competes for the hearts and minds of the voters in their respective channels — and the winner get Congress and the White House.
Sound good? Now check out the traffic trends (Hat tip: Alexa) below. Still sound good?
Facebook, the students-only turned come-one-come-all social networking community, has introduced a new gift shop feature. For $1, you can buy a cutesy icon and send it on to someone else on the Facebook network. The recipient can start accumulating these ??tiny tokens of appreciation? on their profile page. You can make the gift public, which makes it show up on the ??Wall? or keep it private thus hiding it from the world.
There is a non profit twist to this feature. All proceeds from gift shop sales in the month of February go to Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. The company has this to say about its selection:
When choosing a charity to work with, Facebook turned to its users. We discovered that not only was breast cancer awareness the largest cause-related group on Facebook, it was the second largest Facebook group, with more than 800,000 members.
Many non profit groups have started creating profiles on these social networking sites with the intent of reaching the users within them. Here is an example of how that development can bear fruit, both in terms of membership and financial rewards. The company is promising at least $0.50 for every dollar raised.
The gift shop adds an interesting new tweak to the social networking websites where interactions were so far curtailed to making friends, posting stuff, reading your friends?? stuff, and leaving comments for each other. All free, available for the time and effort of registering with these networks. As far as I know, this may be the first attempt at monetizing these interactions. Making it a $1 effort that people are more likely to spend without much thought seems to be a good way to go.
Social networks and micro payments can make for a beneficial combination for the future. If this one picks up steam, it can be creatively modified to become a fundraising avenue for non profit organizations. Give a polar bear icon for $1 and the funds will be donated to World Wildlife Federation. Or even better, give a $1 directly to the Save Darfur campaign and the campaign will give you a ribbon that you can display on your profile.
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