Creating a Facebook for development
If you graduated from college in the last couple of years, you will have heard of a gamut of social networking sites: Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook, to name a few. Even for those without freshly minted college degrees, these websites are hard to ignore - Facebook claims to have at least 90 million active users, and organizations as diverse as Amnesty International and Apple have established social networking presences. And while they're great for certain purposes - what did your friend do last weekend? which NYT's op-ed is he reading - they go only so far in connecting communities with very specific interests. Thus enters Business Fights Poverty, a website that aims to connect professionals who work on the business side of international development.
The trick for any social networking site, of course, is reaching a tipping point in terms of the number of members. It's something like going to a party - who will enter the room first, second, third, etc.? The opportunity facing Business Fights Poverty, though, is that no other organization has really tried to fill this niche yet. Perhaps the time is right for a Facebook for development.
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What's wrong with Facebook as a Facebook for Development?
Posted by: Owen Barder | Sep 15, 2008 1:14:01 PM
Owen, not everyone has or wants a facebook account. People put their whole lives on that thing not reading the privacy statment which says that facebook may share this data with third parties. No thanks.
Ning is not necessarily any less of a walled garden or data silo, but at least it supports OpenSocial and OpenID (the criticisms of which I am also well aware, but it's still an open commodity standard). Quite apart from being a platform proper.
Posted by: Josef Assad | Sep 15, 2008 2:59:41 PM
Yes, but the power of these web 2.0 social networking sites is that it lowers the barriers of entry. Initiatives do not require marketing budgets to implement an effective marketing campaign.
That has to be a good thing.
Posted by: Tamara Palamakumbura | Sep 16, 2008 4:07:31 AM
Hi Ryan,
Interesting thoughts. I've been writing a bit about this myself on my weblog (arjencito.wordpress.com). This generated some interesting discussions.
Cheers,
Arjen
Posted by: Arjen Mulder | Sep 16, 2008 5:09:33 AM
I think is not relevant where people meet...
For me what's relevant is the idea of business and business people working to fight poverty (well and others, for sure).
I hope we can see it in Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Yahoo, Google, Ning, Twitter, Delicious, Youtube, Digg, MSN, ...
Because if we see that movement, it will mean that there are plenty of people worried, or thinking, suggesting, inventing, working...
Doing something!! That for me is what's really important, not if is in Facebook or in Ning.
Posted by: Joduba | Sep 16, 2008 7:45:30 AM
It would be more interesting if there was a facebook for humanitarian and development workers in general, that would include missionaries to capitalists.
Posted by: Etherspirit | Sep 22, 2008 2:17:02 PM
There are plenty of development social networks and tools out there already.
You're nearly there, although co-branding/labelling, monetised open-source kernels and/or a gtld with social and financial conditions are the only options that offer the market and cultural flexibility to create a worthwhile global governance network.
Posted by: Paul Massey | Oct 29, 2008 5:56:20 PM
The problem with all of these "415 scams" is that when people see the success of facebook, myspace, et al, they see the potential to harness social networking as a means to whatever ends they're trying to acheive. But the part that they dont see is that social networking as a whole thrives because it provides constant and pleasant distractions. People aren't social networking for change, they are social networking out of sheer boredom, instead of doing things like...working.
The other point that people seem to miss is that facebook has 200 million users, their social network does not, and may never achieve the type of critical mass it takes to even break one or two million users.
Getting them to sign up isn't enough, you need to keep them coming back. And let's be honest "corporations against poverty" isn't going to keep me clicking.. and i'm very pro-progressive agendas. Quite honestly, i'd rather name the last 5 places i visited or my favorite 5 beers.
Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 21, 2009 11:15:37 AM
Creating a Facebook for development is a laudable initiative. For all the obvious reasons. So go for it.
Anonymous can continue trying to "stay away from boredom," name-count-beer-click. Anonymously, of course!
Posted by: Keith | Apr 21, 2009 8:36:20 PM
Social networking for development work is a great idea. I can see many of the current local, regional, national or international networks in different development topics interacting in a more effective way through social networking sites.
This obviously will neither replace traditional face-to-face interaction nor will it bring to life a community that is not active by its own, but will definitely bring people together in less time and at a lower cost.
The tools are out there. You can create your own social network for the topic and purpose that you want, like "Business Fighting Poverty" did. Check:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/14/34-more-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/
So, there's no excuse to continue saying "I don't like Facebook, MySpace or so..." People can create their own social networks from scratch very easily, and in many cases for free.
Posted by: Alfredo | May 15, 2009 3:40:50 PM
This is a very good idea and a smart business development strategy.
We are all so interconnected. New technology enables innovative ways of networking and group forming that we can use to connect the dots and collaborate to produce development solutions.
Social Networking enables the immediacy of communication and sharing of know-how which fosters the creation of an evolving pool of “living” knowledge. The networks cultivate this knowledge transforming it into actions and in turn to meaningful solutions that are relevant.
What can give a competitive advantage to development (but this applies to all fields) would be to give equal emphasis to the medium (technology) as much as to the message. Food for thought.
Posted by: Paola Storchi and Nanette Dewester | May 18, 2009 11:56:19 AM