Chris I'm astonished at how inactive Facebook users are, even when linked to social cause groups. Barely any discussion at all.

Got any ideas about waking things up with some kind of facebook application?

well jeff you have put a finger on several of the modal ways I wouldnt use facebook -there are so many add on apps, I only use about 3

its also my feel that people are in general creating new groups faster than anyone could populate the; ie most are born to be 7 day wonders

however a few are incredibly powerful if you happen to own them and they are large since that gives you email permission assuming you do have topics relevant to group to start

one of the things I like better is the up to 20 person internal email unlike the one by one eg here

I organise circulations by people I know care about the same context be this place or issue eg green energy

these mail conversations keep a good level of interactivity going, mutual progress, and additionally facebook treats the first link in an email as something to include as in the mail - eg good if you want to introduce a youtube video discussion into part of the email groups deliberation

of course by accident it turns out that sometimes an email circulation group also goes adopt a group as an extra area of conversation but apart from membership protools I usually suggest that if we need more parallel threads its better to come to ned!

Photographs are potentially a key network weaver across facebook

1 because if you have a photo and companion text that is central to conversational reasons you might at facebook, most groups permit photos; and the photos first text is peremanently available for editing

For example most world changers make all their projects and dialogues a lot less workable due to misunderstandings on compound risk

so why not a facebook photo, iq quiz http://www.facebook.com/photo.ph p?pid=535201&o=all&op=1& amp;view=all&subj=4272322357 &aid=-1&id=670257246& ;oid=4272322357

, and next network weaving over to a longer resource Q&A space :in ned of course! http://www.ned.com/group/network weavers/news/7/

One of the do-not-forgets about facebook is that almost anyone under 30 tends to use it the next time they are koving and looking for new connections -it is the student or pst-student standard for that

I had a nice surprise since being 50something I dont often get included in under 30s reconnections list - but this time it was from the lady who worked nearly 3 years as Bill Drayton's executive secretary and in effect had been his email and other corresponding voices in most of my occasional feedback from him .. by good fortune she's moving to london and I know about 500 young people eg 1 http://wiki.espians.com/Main_Pag e

there who want to understand a lot more about what ashoka and social entrepreneurs are all about; its odd that every tme they have tried to ask the ashoka london office it hasnt exactly been extrovert in replying - perhaps we can change that soon -not that I am overclaiming either facebook's or my oiling of this process but it is amazing how one missing link stops all sosrts of goodwill flows that citizens do so deeply want to change now that we seem to have about 5 years left to change this most unsustainable of globalisations

from london guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_new s/story/0,,2187073,00.html

Amnesty harnesses Facebook generation

Bobbie Johnson Tuesday October 9, 2007 Guardian Unlimited

Amnesty International said today that social networking websites were a crucial new arena for promoting human rights.

The group was launching a campaign, Unsubscribe, to highlight human rights abuses in the war on terror and reach out to websites such as Bebo and Facebook, Amnesty officials said.

The campaign is the latest step into the 21st century for Amnesty, which was set up in 1961 and has traditionally engaged in letter-writing campaigns to encourage action over human rights abuses around the world.

Article continues Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, said: "Unsubscribe will engage with the millions of people who passionately believe in the right to a fair trial and the right not to be tortured.

"Unsubscribe is about rejecting the false choice between terrorism on the one hand and abuse of human rights on the other."

The campaign has direct support from Bebo, the British-based social networking website. Joanna Shields, the president of Bebo, said that she hoped Amnesty would be able to use the website's virtual word of mouth in order to spread its message further.

"The Unsubscribe campaign really speaks the language of Bebo," she said. "We are all about people coming together to explore ideas and share their passions and to make a positive impact - key aspects of Amnesty's new campaign."

At the launch of Unsubscribe in Birmingham today, Amnesty also unveiled a series of hard-hitting posters and adverts including images of a dog attacking a prisoner at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and images of a detainee at the Guantánamo Bay camp.

The organisation has tried other internet campaigns to engage new supporters, including the Irrepressible.info project, launched last year, which focused on protecting freedom of speech online.

The Irrepressible website now has nearly 75,000 supporters, but by harnessing popular networking sites officials hope they can drum up even more backing.

The move into social networking comes after huge interest in a Facebook group dedicated to supporting pro-democracy protesters in Burma. Launched three weeks ago it has swelled to nearly 400,000 members, and helped organise protests and demonstrations around the world.

But although the large membership shows a weight of support around the world, one of the organisers admitted that it would need more than just signatories to help change the situation in Burma.

"We don't imagine that the generals in Burma are really taking any notice of this group," said Johnny Chatterton, the UK organiser for the Burma campaign. "We just hope that by showing how much support there is for the protests we can put pressure on local politicians here in the UK and elsewhere and get them to change their policies."

So. we're all converging on the same thoughts about getting out a social message on this medium. There's a bit of a chat going on about social networks too.

http://www.facebook.com/group.ph p?gid=2379374935

I came across a blog article about viral marketing a few weeks ago. I think it offers some pretty good insight about using places like Facebook. The link is at http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/ kintz/archive/2006/10/01/1683.ht ml

I think the challenge at facebook is like the challenge anywhere else. Someone has to have an idea, or reason for converging, and they have to find ways to send invitations over and over to invite individuals and groups to connect.

We had so much traffic on the original Omidyar.net because the perceived invitation was from Pierre himself. Thus, the lower your level is on the celbrity baromiter, the higher the power of your message has to be to get people's attention.

The conversations we started about Network Weaving relate to potential solutions for network building.

I agree with what you say dan. I am very interested in groups at facebook that appear either to have a convergent mechanism or a collaboration intent as a cluster of groups.

I will come back and list a few examples

Incidentally 20 years ago I first started writing books and offering tools for those with too many brands in a crowded space whose main chance involved selective colaboration. One of the little published truths is that brands connect with our brain's neural network- once you remember a brand however junkily eg McDonalds it triggers lots of other identities around the images and needs of our peers/family as well as self: golden arches, big mac, ronald mcdonald, childrens fun meals etc; so as far as our brain is concerned it can better recall a colaboration cluster of brands than one; similarly if fa facebook group linked itself to a collaborative cluster of ten- they could each lead with their different memory joggers - some by when an issue comes back into the news, some diarising joint events across all the collaboration groups; some appealing to a particular demographic or time in your weekly diary on anything else that gets at elast one of the 10 groups active again in networkers minds; similarly of course ned (group) could try marrying some facebook groups

eg africa ++ used its facebook size to convene diaspora meetings london, next other cities cataloguing empowerment up projects as witnessed by africans who are now working abroad

I am interested in facebook, but reluctant to jump on due to the privacy/security issues I associate with Facebook. I'm particularly concerned that what I post there may be used in ways that I am opposed to (data-mining, for example).

Has anyone encountered problems using Facebook?

not sure about data mining, but it does bother me to have to download programs in order to read/respond to some of the things people send.

You might be interested in this posting by Evvy.

What I've seen of Facebook advertising has fallen a little flat so far, something called Ad Chap trying to grab some market share from Google Adwords is impressive but has technical problems. So I got 60 hits in my trial, but the link failed and they never saw the product/social issue.

A couple of new apps have caught my interest. First Business 2.0 which is a free business and products registry, no harm in signing up if it costs nothing I guess.

The other is a contender for Ebay's crown. Radical buy allows you to list products for sale, get paid online and offer other people a commission to sell it for you.

So I posted the software I'm selling to fund P-CED activism and immediately up pop two would be sales reps, willing to sell for a 15% share.

This could be very interesting...

yes thanks for the facebook group refernec jeff -definitely some fun conversations on facebook use and network potentaisl going on at that group- if anyone else is in facegroup with unique insights please say so I can add it to roll of honour at top post of this thread

jeff's facebook group had a therad in it which is reviewing what unique stuff if any does facebook liberate; I spent 20 minutes trying to sum up my first 4 months elapsed time clues on why facebook does add some unique for me possiblities though its hard work compared with perhaps initial hopes but then I would make that caveat about almots every virtual mode apart from email itself * * * I think that there are about 15 things I have tried to do on facebook and about 5 I realise it will always be useful for me -several rather mundane

1 mundane: yes I prefer it to linkin as a way of recalling who I have some virtual permision to contact which is a bit different in updating my knowledge of a person from them just being in my inbox (and of cousre vice versa)

2 a feature I really do like though not that many of my peers use is the 20 person email; there are often itmes when I am really curious about an issue and I think quite hard about the specific combination of 20 people I most want to sustain conversational inetractions with; I have to say only about 1 in 4 of these conversations sustain a long and rich thread; the point of course is that on facebook a 100 post thread remains as one post in your facebook inbox not the 100 posts it would be if you were on email

3 I am one of those people who believes (actually has been studying for 24 years http://macrae.tv/_wsn/page3.html) we have a few terribly urgent issees (to do with reasserting community up not dominace by global down) which citizen networks have a few years left if we are to retrieve human sustainability; frankly every tool on the internet is quite frustrating in terms of how much work one has to do to get real actions threading citizens and does not anyhow exist effectively on its own - eg it needs to connect with real meetings http://collaborationcafe.tv or other tools if uniting actions beyond talk are to moblise;

3a so is facebook helping on any sustainability critical issue that matters to me? I guess its too early to say; my main activity of the next few months is to get 1000 people to attend a real meeting with Dr Yunus in London http://www.facebook.com/note.php ?note_id=7179856845 I am not far up the exponential on that yet as there are a couple of key decisin points like knowing the exact date that Dr Yunus chooses before I can go all out in using facebook as part of our invitation process; in parallel mapping who else that loves linking aroung yunus initiatives http://yunusforum.blogspot.com -as a worldwide change collaboration network - is on facebook and will therefore help collaboratively is something that it seems to need more serendipity on facebook than I would wish; in other words I know a few of the people or groups on facebook who unite around yunus but I have no idea how many I am missing but could be finding

4 there are uses some people are lucky enough to be able to test with facebook that I cant really; for example if I was at university I could imagine facebook and university being wholly different in terms of social networking choices 9and even life gateway options) than when I was at university 30 years ago; I am not altogether clear whether at the age of 18-21 I would have used the far larger and more diverse contact base of being there both for real and for virtual in ways that would always have been time productive for me but yes overwhelmingly I would have like to have had the chance to see what

If you are on FaceBook please consider voting for the G.R.O. Foundation Speed Granting proposal for the month Feed Families for the Holidays and recruit others! Voting closes December 14th.

Hi Meron - done, despite (or maybe due to) my concerns about facebook (well, I'm now on there now, anyway, primarily because of other work, linking anti-poverty and peace issues).

Keep up the excellent work, and I hope you're healed!

Just moved from 4th to 3rd place on the Razoo Speed Granting! Keep those votes coming.

Feed Families for the Holidays

After a bit of jockeying we are now in second place but still have quite a bit to go to catch the leader so if you haven't voted yet please do and recruit your friends!

Feed Families for the Holidays

this is probably one of thise things that would not have evolved the inspiring way its going without facebook

Mary Smaragdis sent a message to the members of Friends of the Sun

Microsystems Foundation.

Join Us!

Friends of the Sun Microsystems Foundation Townhall Program Update and Discussion

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 12:30-2:30 US Pacific

In person and dial-in/video conference.

Details:

Sun's Santa Clara, California Campus Building 15, Stanford Conference Room 4150 Network Circle Building 15 Stanford Conference Room Santa Clara, CA 95054

Dial-in: 866 651 9314 (US) 865 525 0765 (outside US) code: 143 1449

Video conference: http://mebeam.com Room: FOSF

Agenda:

Engineers Without Boarders (Dan Zucker) Global Matching Gifts Program (Joyce Murata) Volunteer Programs (Joyce Murata, Julie Smith and Liz Griswold) - Volunteer tool - Global Holiday Drive - What's on tap for WW Volunteer Week Creating Community (Natalie Ajluni and Mary Smaragdis) - Facebook, blog and more

The audio will be recorded and replay will be made available.

Everyone is welcome.

If you are not a Sun employee and would like to attend in person,

please send email to Townhall@Sun.com to sort out getting you physical access to the campus.

We welcome you to join us!

With the run up to the hoidays I'm behind in my reading. Just came across this Facebook is the "It" Company of 2007, FastCompany November 2007

This particularily caught my attention:

[Snip]

Zuckerberg is focused on encouraging developers to come up with more programs for the platform. He's even willing to give them money: In September, Facebook announced the formation of FbFund, which offers grants of $25,000 to $250,000 to developers with promising plans to build a business on the platform.

[Snip]

Well yes, and I believe there's scope to develop revenue streams for social purpose, but if you read some of the current developer comments ideas are being snatched by other developers with some regularity. There's still a dispute over the IP rights of Facebook isn't there?

My instinct would be not to trust anyone involved further than I could throw them. Create a revenue building app, allow nonprofits etc to use and adapt it under free licence, OK.

That's going to make any collaboration difficult without being really close. I've tried using the developers toolkit for ASP.NET but can't get very far with it at all.

It's been slow sloggin' on FaceBook. With only two more weeks to go in the voting we've managed to hold steady in 7th place. But that won't get us the dollars. If any of you have suggestions of how to campaign for votes we'd sure love to hear them.

I've plastered some posters with a connecting URL enclosed around Second Life ... hopefully that will help.

If you haven't voted yet go here to VOTE!!!

I get this feeling that there's no chance of winning the razoo prize unless you very specifically learn how past or current winers did it.

http://www.circlek.org/ presumably this winner's circle is a tight community which ore or less programmed the razoo peldge on its homepage?

The big challenge (for me) with the Razoo Grant Challenge is it's a monthly horerace to simply get out the vote. A simply clickfest.

Much as many of the rules were complex, we saw and learned a lot more during our handful of collaborative projects funding from 2004-9/7/07