ONLINE EVENT-Online Social Networking/ Intro

Could we also have an open API so that people can choose how and when to share those profiles?

I am creating a profile for my participants that gather a significant amt of information and also contains a membership based verification of identity system. I am going to have that information open so that if participants want to share that data - they will be able to.

Is there something out there that already exists?

that is one reason why I was suggesting creating an umbrella for all of NPO's and technical organizations at least. You know kind of like what orkut did with the communities.

I am also experiencing burnout. I never check friendster and I have left orkut and tribe fall by the wayside. My main points now are flickr, Live journal and omidyar.net.

I like the old interface rule of 3-8 applies here as well. Except for the most social.

Silona - there is an XML standard called FOAF that is available. Tribe and Ecademy support it.

You can find out more here:
http://www.foaf-project.org/

Phil, thanks for introducing yourself. I think we need more people with advertising experience in order to answer Chris's question "How do I reach people when they are there across a variety of different networks?"

I agree that communities of interest will attract people with common goals, but there are probably thousands of different communities that share the same interests. They may be competing with each other for members, and even funding.

I think that social network analysis tools can help overcome this. For instance, I use GIS maps to show where poverty is most concentrated in Chicago and where poorly performing schools are located. These are places where tutor/mentor programs are located. I plot the location of existing programs, by age group and type of program. This shows that most programs are in different neighborhoods, thus instead of competing, they could be working together to increase invovlement.

In the LINKS section of my web site I include links to those programs with web sites, as well as to more than 1000 other organizations, and communities, where people are learning about poverty, poor schools, etc. By building this resource, it becomes a resource for others, who link to my site. If enough people do this it raises our listing on Google search, and becomes another way to draw members to our community.

I had a 17 year advertising career with a large corporation and every week we sent out 3 waves of ads to 20 million people inviting them to visit one of our 400 stores. I don't have ad dollars, so the only way to extend an invitation to visit my web site, or a tutor/mentor program shown on the map, is to create events that draw attention to tutoring/mentoring, and to teach volunteers and leaders to spider out through the various social networks and communities to a) share information; b) encourage visits to our community.

If this is done consistently it can build a connection between the various communities who focus on the same issue, and provide a navigation path for people who enter looking for information, or friends, or a place to get involved.

Here are the networking I sites I use-

[*] Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook to keep in touch with friends and reconnect with others I know[/*]

[*] LinkedIn to keep in touch with contacts I make through e-mail lists and websites. I use this the most for networking. I search for people who might help me with my career goals and ask my connections to forward requests. As I am searching for a nonprofit position in another location, this is a great tool for me to use to make new contacts.[/*]

[*] Del.icio.us to keep my bookmarks in one place and share with others. I use this the most to share nonprofit technology links with the tags nptech and net2. I also create my own tags to keep things organized for myself on other projects I am involved in.[/*]

[*]Flickr I use to be a part of the groups on there like the netsquared group. I also upload images for me to use in my blog postings.[/*]

How can nonprofits use these tools?

Facebook- Even though this is a college network, there are probably nonprofit related events or student groups at colleges. If there is an event or student group, someone involved in these should start a group on their college facebook for others on there to join.

If there is an event going on, you can invite people to the event or place an ad on the facebook.

Friendster and Myspace - Both of these have groups on there and there is a nonprofit category. Start a group for your nonprofit. Make an account for your organization, campaign, or issue to support. Your new account will allow others to add you as a friend.

On Friendster you can search users by location, affiliations, and companies.

LinkedIn - If you are interested in finding others who are in the nonprofit sector, search for them by selecting fund-raising, international trade and development, non-profit organization management, philanthropy, program development, and/or think tanks under Organizations and Nonprofit.

You can also search by keyword using nonprofit or not-for-profit or any other related term to find users. Some users who work for a nonprofit might put an industry like Internet or Information Technology if they have tech position with a nonprofit. You can also find people who work with nonprofits and volunteers by searching by keyword.

You can search by location, company (including companies used to work for), and job title.


How can we connect with each other on these networks?

We should come up with a word/phrase to put in our profiles to connect with each other. For example, on LinkedIn I put nonprofit technology for my interests. If more people put nonprofit technology in their interests or Techsoup in their affilations, we can connect with each other better.

You can also add a link to your profiles on your blog or website.


Emily

Blogs and similar sites seem to do a better job of aggregating people who were formerly outside your network--particularly when cross-linking elevates your Google ranking as you mention.

There is another promising social networking software, and I can't recall the name of it, in beta.

The premise is that you build your network by making introductions. You enter Person A's email and Person B's email and post a short note describing why you think each person would benefit by knowing the other. The application invites each person to join your network.

I haven't used this application yet--can't even find it anymore. Rats. But I had the impression that you could use it to manage contacts that weren't subscribed to the application.

This would be a Killer App in my book: I know Dave through his blog and Bruce through linked in. Dave, meet Bruce.

Hello,

Brian Satterfield, TechSoup's Staff Writer here. I'd be curious to hear from those of you who have used the various social-networking platforms as a fund-raising medium. Did it work? If so, what were some of the challenges involved in convincing others to donate? If it didn't work, what's your theory regarding why?

I'm glad to see this discussion break out of strictly the friend-of-a-friend systems and into all kinds of online community...

Some common themes that are purcolating here are:
1. The LinkedIn, Tribes, etc are liked walled gardens and this artificial (although low) barrier, prevents some real networking although each community has its own merit.

2. There's too many tools that provide "community" which, IMHO, sort of doesn't really build a "network" since there are so many islands. While I'm personally not "looking for strangers" as someone mentioned, I think it can be interesting to see what people in nearby circles are saying, reading, thinking. I think the trick here is working with the fact that people will congregate online where they are going to; but build in an open standards means of discovery, directory, and other kinds of services that platforms like Tribe, Care2, etc offer so that a real extended connected network is possible. While there is the FOAF(net) XML standard, its not enough since the discovery and directory mechanisms don't seem to be manifesting (or is there a project I should know of?).

When I think of online social network, I think of the network emphasis. Several people here indicated how many people they are directly connected to and how many people are really represented in that network. Has anyone leveraged this "extended" network in clever ways?

I would like to think that these networks, especially large ones, could manifest some of the social "messaging" characteristics found in Gladwell's, "The Tipping Point"

I could also imagine that for the non-profit crowd, a professional network which lets organizations discover each other and communicate that have similar or complimentary missions would be invaluable. There seems to me no reason why some of these larger platforms can't do the job.

I too use all kinds of tools and I think ultimately, having a personal portal that uses RSS to link in each of these "Best of breed" tools and communities to your own personal dashboard is a workable solution to participating in so many communities. However, this still doesn't provide much, if any, discoverability across communities... Perhaps Googling folks is the best way to do this?

John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup

John, nice kickoff message!

While we're sort of framing the discussion and taking the wide view to start, I thought I'd chime in from a theory standpoint. We have two days, so I figure we'll have time to get into tactics.

As part of my homework for this event, I went to a seminar last night given by FAS Research (www.fas.at) ISNAE (www.isnae.org) on using social network analysis (SNA) in marketing. One key point was that the current marketing communications model is diadic - a sender and a receiver relationship. SNA suggest a triadic marketing model where you develop marketing
plans based on the structure of the network looking
to build and build on triadic relationships where knowledge of and participation in your organization is embedded in robust social networks.

The point here is that diadic relationships are
unstable. They can dissolve easily with little
social cost. It's also harder to mobilize and grow your member base if all you have is diads.

So for instance, e-mail lists are great and you need that reach, but that's diadic relationship - an organization to a collection of individuals. The individuals aren't necessarily connected to each other. That's a broadcast model.

The next step is to stablize this audience by turning a large set of diadic relationships into a large set of triadic ones. The simple triadic model is that John and Jane knows Techsoup AND they know each other. That's a triad. You want triads. Triads are stable. They last. You can use social networking software to create triads and stablize your membership.

The practical outcome can be things like less donor,
member, volunteer, and e-mail list subscriber churn.

I think this is the approach Techsoup is taking with the Netsquared Events. They are talking the talk and walking the walk with Netsquared (great event by the
way).

That's also the idea behind Care2 Connect. Folks in
Care2 Connect can form and join groups around
their favorite cause. They meet other like-minded members. They learn and have fun together. They stay involved. And they add value in ways we
could never have anticipated.

So to boil it down to mantra - Build Triads.


--

Neal Gorenflo
Online Campaigns
Care2.com

650.622.0871 (o)
415.867.0429 (m)
866.704.8089 (f)

neal@earth.care2.com

Silona,

Yes, I think creating some kind of umbrella which non-profits can build an online social network which represents the sector and individuals participating in it would be hugely beneficial... I don't see any reason why the big platforms couldn't do some of this right now; however, I think some of the challenge is:

1. Discoverability - How can a useful taxonomy,directory, etc, provide a navigable and useful network.

2. Embedding it in NPO culture - To foster adoption, evangelization needs to happen even at the HR level within organizations to get people using and leveraging these networks. I think this will happen over time.

So, the trick is I think not so much technological; but human... how to foster adoption of these tools sectorwide.

I could envision the day when someone new comes on board an organization and along with their network account, email account, they also get an account on the NPO online social network of choice, with a browser home page that is a preconfigured "Dashboard" which can assist that person doing their job for a given non-profit mission. The "Dashboard" would not only include links to all kinds of web resources/info, web2.0 tools; but also to online networks. Some of us do this in a basic way already with subscribing new folks to email lists, etc; but email lists are very faceless and I think a bit scary to some...so IMHO, relatively faceless email listservs and message boards aren't enough; but could be leveraged even more with more online social networking constructs like those found in Tribe, Care2, etc.

John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup

Silona, John,

That's part of the role that Care2 plays in the nonprofit space, a sort of umbrella community which our nonprofit partners can mobilize for their campaigns when needed. We keep the reach on tap so our nonprofit partners only need to pay for it when they need it.

However, it's fairly expensive to keep our community of over 5 million members available and ready to act. We've found that we need to give our members a large number of ways to engage in addition to having our social networking application Care2 Connect. So just a small sample of services:

-Care2 Share (content sharing, integrated with Care2 Connect) http://www.care2.com/connect

-Care2 News Network (news voting service)
http://www.care2.com/news/

-The Petition Site (an advocacy action center),
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/

and over 20 action alerts in a variety of issue areas such as Child Protection, Environment, Consumer Protection, Corporate Accountability, Women's Rights, Labor, etc.

In this sense, Care2 is a combination of a values-based community and a portal with lots of free online services.

Creating and maintaining such a community requires a large engineering staff, which is out of reach for most nonprofits though a coalition could probably finance it. This is just to give you an idea of what's entailed.

That being said, as a board member of an environmental nonprofit, I like this idea and it would probably complement what Care2 is doing.


---

Neal Gorenflo
Online Campaigns
Care2.com

650.622.0871 (o)
415.867.0429 (m)
866.704.8089 (f)

neal@earth.care2.com

I'm glad to see this discussion break out of strictly the friend-of-a-friend systems and into all kinds of online community...

Some common themes that are purcolating here are:
1. The LinkedIn, Tribes, etc are liked walled gardens and this artificial (although low) barrier, prevents some real networking although each community has its own merit.

2. There's too many tools that provide "community" which, IMHO, sort of doesn't really build a "network" since there are so many islands. While I'm personally not "looking for strangers" as someone mentioned, I think it can be interesting to see what people in nearby circles are saying, reading, thinking. I think the trick here is working with the fact that people will congregate online where they are going to; but build in an open standards means of discovery, directory, and other kinds of services that platforms like Tribe, Care2, etc offer so that a real extended connected network is possible. While there is the FOAF(net) XML standard, its not enough since the discovery and directory mechanisms don't seem to be manifesting (or is there a project I should know of?).

When I think of online social network, I think of the network emphasis. Several people here indicated how many people they are directly connected to and how many people are really represented in that network. Has anyone leveraged this "extended" network in clever ways?

I would like to think that these networks, especially large ones, could manifest some of the social "messaging" characteristics found in Gladwell's, "The Tipping Point"

I could also imagine that for the non-profit crowd, a professional network which lets organizations discover each other and communicate that have similar or complimentary missions would be invaluable. There seems to me no reason why some of these larger platforms can't do the job.

I too use all kinds of tools and I think ultimately, having a personal portal that uses RSS to link in each of these "Best of breed" tools and communities to your own personal dashboard is a workable solution to participating in so many communities. However, this still doesn't provide much, if any, discoverability across communities... Perhaps Googling folks is the best way to do this?

John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup

Chris,

What do you now? I would love to chat...

AIM: holdon2seconds
347 385 7865
Who am I?...www.RichHecker.com

Richie Hecker

As a care2 member I do like having the variety of interactions available and personnally make use of many of them. It has become a main portal for me, where I learn about a large variety of interests and post into appropriate groups what I think will be of interest to others.