Social Media

Gather, the social network with substance, announced that three of the country's top brands -- Showtime Networks Inc., Atkins, and American Public Media -- have created their own customized social networks on Gather, leveraging Gather's new free groups service. These brands join hundreds of other organizations -- from prominent national companies to local nonprofits -- that have turned to Gather to share exclusive content, engage in conversations with consumers, and create special events such as live talks and promotions.

Facebook recently revamped and relaunched its Marketplace as a "social classifieds" application, thanks to help from Oodle, an online classifieds startup founded by former eBay and Excite executives.

Convio, Inc., the leading provider of on-demand constituent relationship management software and services to nonprofit organizations, applauds Tweet Congress as the 2009 SXSW Web Award winner in the Activism category. All Web Award winners were announced in a ceremony last night as part of the SXSW Interactive Festival, a five day event that brings together the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technology. Convio was proud to be a supporting sponsor of this year's SXSW Web Awards and the sponsor of the Activism Web Award.

I’ve heard the confused refrain over and over, from friends, colleagues and certainly my wife, “This Twitter thing everyone is talking about … I just don’t GET IT. Who CARES what you had for breakfast this morning!?” They are referring to the 140-character “micro-blog” messages that users publish to a web page for a list of “followers” interested in what they have to say.

Pilots with new media/Web 2.0: including SMS, social networking, podcasts, blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, online video, user-generated content, and virtual worlds have shown more positive than negative results according to a new report from the Direct Marketing Association, the 2009 Response Rate Report.

Now visited by over two-thirds (67 percent) of the global* online population, “Member Communities,” which includes both social networks and blogs, has become the fourth most popular online category – ahead of personal email. It is growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors (search, portals, PC software and email), according to The Nielsen Company’s “Global Faces and Networked Places,” a comprehensive report published today revealing the new global footprint of social networking.

For fundraisers, 2008 was a year of change and challenge. Plummeting endowments, budget cuts and other lows added pressure to bring in new money while spending even less than before.

Yesterday, the mother of a sick child Googled the name of a devastating disease. She got thousands of results, but the ones that interested her the most were links to your organization’s Web site; two stories from the national media; a handful of online support groups for patients and their families; a general health Web site with online communities dedicated to the disease; and one site focused exclusively on a heartsick father’s negative experience with an operator on your organization’s support line.

For fundraisers, the first quarter of the year is as much a time to look back as ahead. It’s a time to find out how year-end appeals tallied up, to assess how winter events performed and perhaps to report back to the board on what it all means.

After the Twestival hangover, how much money was raised for charity:water? Twestival today said that after adding up 116 of the 175 cities involved, the Twitterrati has raised just over $250,000.