Facebook Should Give You a T-Shirt

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.

LinkedIn as a Fundraising Tool?

Recently, NTEN Member Paul Lamb presented to the NTEN Discuss Affinity Group his LinkedIn fundraising experiment: using the social network as a tool to create dollars for Street Tech students through the LinkedIn Answers feature.

A few Affinity Group members felt this was on the borderline of the LinkedIn user agreement and social network etiquette.

Is Facebook Causes Worth the Effort?

NTEN Affinity Groups member Ari Davidow recently prompted a discussion by asking:

Have people had success fundraising by setting up causes in Facebook? For what organizations do they work best? Is there a way to market joining the cause other than virally?

Responses ranged from the pragmatic:

to the dubious:

Since it is so uncontrolled I wonder about the reputation that Causes will develop and if it will be a good thing to be listed there.  Also, it is fine to try it as a learning experience if you are interested but I wouldn't suggest putting in an effort as though this was going to be effective.

Nonprofits Can Be LinkedIn

Only 10 years ago, social networks were built quite differently. We might pump a few hands at conferences, place a few phone calls or meet people for lunch. A labor-intensive way of expanding the little black book, to be sure, but that's the way everybody did it. Networks lived in brainspace and on slips of paper.

But a decade is a long time. Person-to-person meetings are still a great way to make connections, but networks have increasingly less to do with seeing people and more to do with outlets such as LinkedIn.

Learning to Love MySpace?

I'm a total snob when it comes to MySpace. My house is pretty much always spotless, and that's the way I like my interface design, too: clean.

So I get the chills when I check out MySpace. Too cluttered! Nonetheless, it's a tool nonprofits cannot ignore. Folks like IFAW and many others have used MySpace to engage and activate a whole new constituency.

If you're looking to start a MySpace campaign, or if you have one already and want to improve it, check out Heather Mansfield's post on optimizing your MySpace page.