Social media has helped influence the way we donate to charity. It has made the experience more interesting, and makes it easier to get your friends involved. Sites like JustGiving make it easy to co-ordinate sponsored activities (and in the UK, integrates ‘GiftAid’; something many individuals would not bother with when organising such events) and gives the security of knowing that the money (besides a minimal fee) goes to the charity. Others, like the Causes application on Facebook, simultaneously raise both awareness and money.

Whilst people would likely donate to sponsored events even if tools like JustGiving did not exist, sites like that make it much easier to collect donations from distant sources (like friends hundreds of miles away). Sites like JustGiving have developed Facebook apps, so that new technologies can work with them. JustGiving is unfortunately not a free service, and charges charities £15 a month and charge a transaction fee per donation (this is about 5-6%, plus card processing fees). It could be cheaper for some charities to process transactions directly, but I don’t think this is really an unreasonable fee.

I find things like the Causes app much more interesting. They cleverly integrate the social element of it with a fundraising one. However, form my observations, it can have very different results. The amount donated per cause member wildly differs.

Causes with specific fundraising aims, or which serve a select audience, seem to perform better. For example, a Cause that aims to buy a bus for an Indian orphanage has raised over $2,500 with less than 60 members (about $50 on average per member), whilst a Cause that aims to abolish the death penalty has over 100,000 members, but has only raised about $1,000 (less than a cent per member). Whilst it could be argued this due to the moral problems some people may have, much less controversial causes like a cancer prevention one suffer a similar fate: it has over 5,000,000 members but has only raised $130,000 (about 2 cents per member). Another cause, which aims to buy mosquito nets has 15,000 members who have donated over $25,000. Donations seem to be made more generously when the donors know what it’s going to be spent on (whether a bus or mosquito nets!), but less generously on bigger causes with no specific material item being purchased (whether this be opposition to the death penalty, or cancer research) don’t get as many donations per member.

Some charities try to make giving more fun through the Internet, too. UK homelessness charity Shelter allows donors to buy a virtual house from £10 on their website, which can then have a picture, link and message when clicked on. This is advertising in the spirit of the Million Dollar Homepage, but mixing in a charitable element. Innovative, but virtual land isn’t exactly in short supply and you have to wonder how much money it raised for them.

Online giving seems to work best on a small scale, with specific aims, whilst large general campaigns – whether fighting cancer of abolishing the death penalty – will get lots of supporters, but not as much money per supporter!

I have found the Internet makes it easier and more interesting to donate money, but I’m sure some charities could get more donations if they better used it.

The primary aim of a social networking site should be to satisfy of its members. Members do not control such sites; their wants are often slow to be fulfilled or unpopular features introduced.

Facebook fails to have a network for my urban area. If I want to join a geographic network, I have to join that of an urban area, Newcastle, approximately 40 miles away. A Facebook group with nearly 10,000 members exists that lobbies for my area to be made a network exists, but has it been done? No.

Other websites, like MySpace, fail to keep in touch with their users’ needs too. MySpace suffers from featuritis, having introduced pointless services like ‘MySpace Karaoke’ and allowing customisation to such an extent that makes the site inaccessible and inefficient.

Members need a big say in how social networking are operated.

Simply stating that if a site fails to meet the needs of its users, that they will stop using that site, is not a satisfactory solution. These sites are primarily a community comprising smaller communities (social networks), and if users leave for other sites, these communities are torn apart and social networking becomes even more time-consuming, as users must use several sites.

The solution? Co-operation: ‘an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise’.

If members owned the service they use, they could use their democratic voice to get features they want and to ensure that a positive user experience is maintained.

The securing of initial capital obviously proves a problem. However, if each member had to pay an amount – whether £1, £2 or £10 – for a share (and say in the site’s future), this could raise it. This might work especially well for niche social networks, as people willing to contribute to the site’s initial capital could be quickly identified and targeted. Niche networks have been known to rapidly grow. For example, Facebook was originally for students at Harvard and within one month, over half of that university’s undergraduate population had joined^{(see this article)}.

Paying for the upkeep of the site could be a problem too, but member-owners would be able to choose which revenue model they preferred. If the members were willing to pay to subscribe, they could democratically indicate their desire to do so. If members would rather face advertisements, they could democratically choose to do that. At the moment, if social networking sites were to make this decision, it would be somewhat experimental as they could not truly know what their members desired. Consequently, some sites use intrusive adverts, whilst others charge for membership in situations where it is inappropriate.

Of course, some social networking sites are already semi-democratic. Facebook had a ‘Site Governance Vote’ in April 2009, but this was only about changes to the terms of service (something I suspect most members aren’t faintly interested about). This vote was effectively useless. For it to be binding, it needed a 30% turnout. It achieved roughly 3%. Privacy International described it as a ‘massive confidence trick’. In a way, it was important topic on which to vote, but members should be able to vote on issues important to them, not just topics on which the company wants them to vote.

Social networking sites are communities, not just companies. A community should be democratically-controlled in order to ensure its needs are best met and that it can grow in a sustainable and responsible fashion, rather than a fashion in which the main aim is generating higher profits.

Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC described LinkedIn as ‘Facebook for losers’, which got me thinking about the reputations which social networking sites have.

I also considered LinkedIn as the social networking website for professionals, not ‘losers’, and I must agree with an astute commenter, Jim_Panzie, on the BBC blog:

LinkedIn is a great way to keep up with Professional contacts, Facebook and Myspace just didn’t work for me they seemed to be for kids

Perhaps LinkedIn is for people who ‘want to put their CV out’, but even that is a form of networking (just perhaps not as social as Facebook etc).

Facebook used to seem relatively sophisticated when compared to MySpace, and it struck me as attracting an elder and better educated audience. TechCrunch ventured to even claim that choosing between the two was simply an IQ test!

TechCrunch, in 2007, stated that the introduction of widgets into Facebook was a fantastic idea but it has lowered the tone of the network. An increasing amount of young people consequently started to use Facebook and it made the site lose some of its social element and made it more into a playground.

MySpace and Bebo generally stir up images of a bunch of teenagers with distasteful backgrounds and music.

I steer clear of major social networking sites; they’re more hassle than they’re worth and make us unproductive.

Different ages, and classes, use different social networks. Class divides, even online.

Different people use different social networking sites. I don’t use any, the middle-aged (with many exceptions) seem to use Facebook, teenagers seem to use MySpace and Bebo (1/3 of public Bebo profiles belong to people aged between 13 and 17!).

Even though I rarely use social networking sites, I hear day in and day out about them. From what I’ve heard, I have made several judgements about the websites (even though I’ve never used them!).

Facebook users seem to see themselves as ‘better’ than MySpace users, generally being older (ironic considering Facebook’s student origins) than them and realising how annoying auto-playing media is!

MySpace users seem to have ‘oooh look animations follow my mouse’ (courtesy of our good Web 1.0 friend DHTML) and ‘look how pretty my profile is but don’t look at the content… especially spelling!’ attitude. The general bloat MySpace forces users to endure with its advertising and default layout in addition to the bloat users elect to add themselves reminds me very much of Geocities or Angelfire back in the day.

A big problem I have with MySpace is the fact that when you’re trying to design a profile page you seem to spend 75% of your time inventing work-arounds and only 25% of your time designing.

Bebo users seem to be even less self-respecting than MySpace users using even more appalling spelling (here’s a typical comment: ‘hu r yuu n y did yuu add meh..x0x’), BLOCK CAPITALS and terribly designed profiles whenever possible. I had a quick browse through some Bebo public profiles whilst writing this post and I was impressed to find no auto-starting media (they probably block Flash! I’m sure that their target audience would love auto-starting media!).

Feel free to say your own assumptions, opinions or rebuttals to any of my points in the comments

Tags: bebo, facebook, myspace, myspace sucks, social networking, web 2, web 2.0, web2, web2.0