I sat down at my desk this morning only to discover at least a dozen invitations to "trust" my colleagues over at Spock.com. According to their site:

Spock is a search application that organizes information around people. The Spock vision is to create a search result of everyone in the world.

Of course, instead of working on my next workshop presentation, I immediately spent the next 45 minutes engaged in ar'kadan -- poking around and adding tags to my profile. I can't tell you how useful this tool may or may not end up being, but it certainly had a Vulcan death grip on my attention. (Cue laugh track.)

Have you tried Spock.com? What do you think?

NTEN member (and board member) Michelle Murrain shared an opinion on the Information Systems Forum last week:

Spock does seem interesting in that it uses "trust" rather than "friend" or "connection" as the metaphor for its social graph. This might actually make it more useful - I imagine people are much less likely to put people they don't really know in their "trust" network on Spock, whereas there is a real range of opinion about how well you need to know someone to get to be their "friend" on Facebook.

But what's "missing" (deliberately?) are messaging systems and groups. This means that it's not so useful for advocacy or fundraising as Facebook.

Oh - and hat tip to the Vulcan Language Dictionary. "Tonk'peh" translates to "Hello".

New York Times technology correspondent Saul Hansell recommends trying the following exercise:

• Search for "lawyers" on Google. Take a look at the ads on the right side.
• Now, search for "malpractice".
• Finally, search for "lawyers" again. Notice the change in the ads.

As Mr. Hansell notes, this limited implementation of behavioral targeting isn't too bad:

"So far this is largely harmless. It’s hard to imagine any violation that comes from Google having access to what you did 30 seconds before. What’s interesting is what comes next. As Google moves to place advertising on sites like MySpace, which have no natural advertisers, there is ever more pressure for it to use other sources of information to raise the prices at which it can sell those ads."

This is precisely the morass Facebook waded into with their creepy Beacon advertising program. The NYT has a great blow-by-blow of the changes Facebook has made to Beacon over the past 5 weeks, highlighting its slow acceptance of the privacy issues inherent to behavioral targeting.

Today, people around the world are wearing red to show their solidarity with the people of Burma. How do I know? I didn't get it from NPR, the news, or even email. I heard it on Facebook.

There's a lot of activity related to Burma on Facebook right now. There are 379 groups, and 141 events, in a myriad of countries and languages. I belong to one of the groups and have been following their work to see how they are using Facebook to create some real social change.

In this kind of work, with so many organizations and people involved from so many places, there's little chance to pin any particular outcome on any particular actor. But, if we consider social change to be engaging the previously un-engaged -- getting people who didn't know Burma from Bali to learn and take some action -- then I think we can do a nice little investigation.

As part of our association with the Neighborhood Networks Conference, NTEN asked for a list of resources on social networks, blogging, and tagging, as they relate to nonprofits.  This amazing community came through, and the aggregated resources can now be found in a single Google Document we’ve shared with the world.

But this is only the beginning.  I’m sure we haven’t begun to tap the accumulated knowledge of the NTEN community, so if you have a related resource you think we should add, please post it in a comment, below.

NTEN recently started a group on the FaceBook platform, so I've been doing a lot more thinking about how to integrate it into our overall programs. I haven't come up with any concrete answers yet, but I've had a good time exploring! Robin Good, one of my favorite blog reads, had an excellent post yesterday about FaceBook and why it's the platform du jour of the social networking scene. A great read, and a great example of how open technology makes good business sense too:

"The sudden sharp interest is directly indexed to the opening up of the Facebook Platform, which allows developers from around the world to create their own unique Facebook applications. This essentially opens up the entire world of online content for easy aggregation into the existing social networking functionality, so that users can create a profile and personal network of friends whilst taking advantage of all of their favorite online tools and services."

Everywhere you turn, you're hearing about the power of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. But can real nonprofits truly see the benefits behind all the hype?

Clearly, there's a lot of potential for gaining new supporters with these online tools, but many nonprofit organizations struggle to determine how they can fit into a social network application alongside for-profits and social groups. Project Agape is one of the initial Facebook Platform partners, launching Causes on Facebook. This new functionality extends the groups features and makes it possible for users to create causes, take donations, and recruit members. Join us as we explore the power of social networks and learn how to set up your own Cause on Facebook.

Presented by Randall Winston of Project Agape.

> Register Now!

It's about you.  That's what's important to remember about harnessing the power of Web 2.0 for social change - and fundraising for your organization. 

This week NTEN hosted a webinar, What Kevin Bacon Knows about Web 2.0: Six Degrees of Person-to-Person Fundraising, that demonstrated the tools available to individuals and organizations to turn everyone into a celebrity fundraiser.

 Whether you call it the participatory web, read/write web, Web 2.0, or communities dominating brands (my current favorite), there comes a point when all of us have looked up from the MySpace page or blog that we are reading and wondered if anyone outside of our geeky friends is actually looking at this stuff. And perhaps more to the point, many nonprofits are wondering if all this social networking and online participation is a good investment, or just a fun diversion.

Two new studies offer insights into this question by taking a look at who is using participatory technology.  Read more. 

Dan McQuillan, Amnesty, a friend and colleague in London, UK, was inspired by an NTEN post a while back on Social Networks Redux, and wrote this:

It's hardly a surprise that large NGO's are starting to experiment with social networks, given the sheer numbers of people using them and their high media profile. But, judging by comments on the eCampaigning Forum wiki , there's some uncertainty about how non-profits should approach social networks, and especially how to get an effective return for the time that has to be invested in these relationship-spaces. NGOs are also anxious about the loss of control - in a participative space, what happens to the brand and the carefully crafted messaging?

So I did a little Alexa sleuthing (yeah, yeah, Alexa is not definitive but nonetheless interesting) about 'social networks for good' for our next newsletter which will focus all on "communities for a cause." That with the NTC coming up - our own little 'community for change', of course - for ultimate bonding. Call is cross-marketing...

The picture is rather fascinating, comparing some of the more well-known sites Facebook, the overhauled Ning, MySpace, Idealist, and the new Change.org.