David, I thought about your post for a few days--not that I've thought of anything great to say.

The title of the thread was a bit jarring to me. Now I want to be clear that I don't mean that as a criticism, but I do want to explain a bit why I found it jarring.

I'm not sure that "selling the Worldwide Connectory" is the best way to think about it.

One the other hand, I liked very much your metaphor:

I feel as if I’m sitting in the middle of a coalfield with stacks of coal all around me and with the WWC idea like a lighter in my hands. There is a capacity here to harness a huge stock of energy to warm communities across the globe.

The first difficulty I have with the idea of "selling" has to do with the association with money. A friend a while back wrote about the talk about MySpace and a commentator wondering: Where's the money?

My friend Phil turned the question around and asked: Why the Money?

But it's the wrong question. The more interesting one is "why the money"? And it's still gonna take us a long time to get our heads around that. But that's what we're all gonna be asking at some point.

The more effective the internet and the web are at helping us communicate and co-ordinate, the less money will be involved. Because ultimately the economy is a communication network and money is its protocol

The network is not the means to the end of money.

Instead, money and IP are rival protocols in rival networks which are means to the same end : that of articulating human labour to create more wealth for humanity. Money isn't wealth, it's just a kind of signal which can be used to help identify good ideas and channel more resources to them. On the internet we are increasingly finding alternative ways of identifying and signalling what things are worthwhile.

I imagine the Worldwide Connectory very much a product of the communications and technology network--social Web-- that Phil is suggesting as a rival network to money.

I'm probably taking your metaphor of "selling" too literally, but to follow Phil's point is to realize a difference between social networks enabled by communications tools and the markets.

Trust is obviously an essential feature of these new networks. With our experience at Omidyar.net, the subject has been talked to death not only in terms of the reputation system at Omidyar.net, but also how reputation was the key to eBay's success.

Many companies invest in their brands. Brands in a sense are a message that you can trust the product. But public relations manipulates. Even if we are not certain as to how we are being manipulated, we know at some level we are.

Sokari at Black Looks has a post up today about Edward Bernays, the founder of Public Relations, and nephew of Sigmund Freud. She has posted a video of a documentary about Bernays and list a link, Tobacco fixing which tells how Bernays was able to convince women to smoke.

An argument similar to "Guns don't kill people, people do" might be made about advertising. That's fair enough, but perhaps it's possible to see how the unreasonableness of ad campaigns undercuts the objectives of a social network.

Pierre Omidyar's insight about eBay was that an eBay "seal of approval" wasn't going to work. No amount of advertising would make such a seal trustworthy. The reputation had to be separate, and his genius was to provide a system where customer's provided the reputation for the sellers.

Mark has posted a thread about America's Giving Challenge. Can you imagine that I'm a little bit grumpy about these sorts of competitions? I am, but on the other hand I find watching how the organizations have mobilized for the effort extraordinarily informative about the kinds of kindling to set your bags of coal alight.

Scott Beale clearly has done a great job. I do get his messages from Atlas Service Corps at Facebook. But I also follow Beth's Blog and have for some time. So just by following Beth Kanter's blog I was already aware of the Sharing Foundation and her advocacy of it. Beth's Blog is a blog whose purpose is to show non-profits how they can use social media. So at her blog the whole complicated story of Beth's campaign to get matching money from America's Giving Challenge is laid out for all to see.

The approach is not selling and the differences are important because the methods used I believe will be much more effective for the Worldwide Connectory.

Opinions vary, but one case study to look at is Bono's (Product)Red. This campaign is very much about using selling, but it's not a brand that's taken off despite the very best persuaders in industry.

The alternative ways people are finding to do cool things on the Internet that Phil points out aren't just different, they are different because they are not premised on money as the communication network. "Selling" says to put your money where your mouth is. But what the Worldwide Connectory is about really is the communication, the engagement across boundaries. The social media approach that Beth Kanter and others write about is a real alternative. It's new and still in creation, but there are a number of trail blazers to engage and to learn from.