As usual, some get it, some don't:
Social networks like Facebook that closely resemble users' off-line social life could shake up philanthropy. Even if large organizations don't immediately launch a cause on their own, any Facebook member can start one on its behalf. There have so far been 77 causes launched for UNICEF alone, raising some $11,000 for the fund. "We think it's great that our friends and supporters have done this on their own on our behalf," says spokeswoman Kristi Burnham.
More revolutionary still, social networks are creating a direct relationship between donor and cause through heightened transparency (on Facebook you can determine exactly where the money goes) and lower transaction costs (no mass-mailings for minor-league nonprofits, no prohibitively expensive fund-raising galas for small-fry donors). "I can see who made a donation and I can say 'thank you' on Facebook," says Lindsey O'Neill, a development officer at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "It really helps to foster that connected feeling." And it also gives donors something to gloat about in front of all their friends.
This suggests that the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline. No single company, therefore, can capture the social graph. Ning, a fast-growing company with offices directly across the street from Facebook in Palo Alto, is built around this idea. It lets users build their own social networks for each circle of friends.
Perspectives on the Microsoft-Facebook Partnership:
My take on the partnership? It's been the same since I first wrote about it in 2006. Facebook is this generation's identity archive, and any company with sophisticated data-mining tools can derive significant value from the data. Google's entire infrastructure is set up around this type of data collection; Facebook just bought it for the steal of 240MM.
Facebook reveals the BBC as a liberal hotbed:
A survey of BBC employees with profiles on the site showed that 11 times more of them class themselves as "liberal" than "conservative".
Microsoft's bid may be explained in simpler terms, anyway. A high roller, once popular but now old news, has decided to spend his way back into the in-crowd. That could be an expensive process, but the alternative must have seemed worse: everyone "friending" Google.
Out of idle curiosity, I started running an ideological breakdown of Facebook users by age, starting at Facebook's minimum age of 14 and working my way up. The spreadsheet is here so you can follow along.
Advertisers leap into Facebook:
ANY day soon, rumour has it, Apple, Coca-Cola, Condé Nast, General Motors, Nike and a host of other world-famous brand names will sign an advertising deal with the hottest company on the planet.
Microsoft makes Facebook a club you don't want to join:
And what does Microsoft gets for its money? Officially, the chance to sell internet ads for Facebook outside the United States. Unofficially, the chance to spit in Google's corporate eye.
Since the unspoken ground rule of a Facebook friendship is that it is far from intimate, we're collecting undemanding e-friends with abandon while striking off poor performers in real life.
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