Had missed the creation of ThinkMTV.com, nice looking site and nice tag line "Your cause. Your effect".

Will be interesting to see the evolution.

Things are off to a very (very) slow start indeed at Think MTV:

http://think.mtv.com/MarkGrimes/

The "Most Discussed" group "How Can We Stop Genocide in Darfur?" has not had a post/message in four days:

http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF00 02E0140019009897FA/Groups/GroupV iew.aspx

Agreed it will be very interesting to see how Think MTV, Razoo, Avaaz, Zaadz and others evolve over time.

IMO, if all this online social networking doesn't lead to participants engaging in OFFLINE action, then they have no value.

I don't know about you all, but I am overwhelmed with requests to join this or that online networking group. Indeed, it will be interesting to see where these are, including Ned, in six months, let alone six years.

Totally agree with you Jayne. At some stage, it's only so interesting who is downloading what on Facebook. From a social standpoint, perhaps Facebook may be a great place to keep in contact with friends...beyond that...who knows?

The "better world" networks...Think MTV, Razoo, Wiser Earth, Zaadz, Ned...had better translate into real world activity...way outside of just talking and yacking online...or they have not really accomplished much. Then again, that's why Ned is trying to build an online network...and real world physical locations. Meshing the online and real world.

Tell me about it!

Somewhere in this tangle of social networking sites I reported my own experience in recent months. I joined a new one, that happened to be sponsored by one of my customers and Ashoka among others.

They were promoting and inviting me to an overseas conference. I couldn't afford to go as many of my customer are late payers, especially these sponsors of a social network.

So, I reply to the social network saying - "hey, how can I come to a conference that I can't afford because my customer doesn't pay me while they sponsor you. Doesn't that mean I'm indirectly funding a conference I can't afford to go to?"

No reply to that, of course.

As it's now coming up a year past the training course I didn't get paid for. I wrote to them and several others yesterday making an unprecedented step. In so many words, it was "this is social purpose that our business funds, and your not paying me on time, prevents me from doing it".

One of the customers who didn't get that letter yesterday came forward on this day of poverty representing one of the worlds largest leasing companies. They wanted to renew the contract, a question of 400 dollars a year, for only 6 months in case they decided to switch to another supplier. They got that letter in response.

Anyway, back to what Jayne say, which is perfectly right. being there and clicking a mouse button doesn't mean there's anything further going on. As I speak there are millions standing up and speaking out, but they're sure not taking any notice that we're making progress, in spite of the obstructions.

What about Facebook then? Well, to me there's only so much you can do with a network full of activists preaching to each other, the converted. We need to get out there and make an impact on the millions that aren't particularly activist.

Now Facebook has some great stuff for making things viral especially building applications that can focus very accurately on people with specific interests. it's a marketing dream com true surely.

Now I'm not going to say any more, in case I give someone some commercial ideas, the bad guys that is. I'd like the good guys to come help me do stuff that turns profit into poverty action.

The good news at least is that the UN representative in Ukraine just stood up and told the country they needed a plan to address poverty, the incoming government is making the same kinds of noises and our microeconomic development proposal is on the table, and has been while the political vacuum ensued.

TechSoup has been doing the best job of highlighting nonprofits using various online social networking sites, however, what I'm still not reading about is "here's how using MySpace / FaceBook / SecondLife / Whatever lead to our organization having a significant number of more volunteers / more event attendees / more donations, and has clearly been worth the trouble/effort of using and updating our profile on such."

Jayne, Being aware that there are social networking sites and to some degree social purpose networks within, I decided to create a little experiment recently prompted by Skoll Social Edge.

http://www.socialedge.org/discus sions/scale/case-study

So, I'm treating this as a test case. Attempting to discover if anyone, with the right tools and peers group collaboration turn good intentions into sustainable social enterprise.

To find out if we can raise awareness of the cause, find new donors and create revenue streams where there are presently none.