Show Me the Money

July 20, 2010 | Written by Dave Cannon

Since last Thursday, here’s the latest news on what’s happening in social media:

The Fun in Fundraising

BlueSwarm is a web-based company that has been around for a while, but in light of its growing reputation, the social media fundraiser has started to register on a few more radars. What, you might ask, is a social media fundraiser?

The core idea behind Blue Swarm is easily explained by its Facebook application, which is the root of the company’s success. Using the app, Facebookers can create their own fundraising campaigns and send out donation requests to all of their friends. Those friends, in turn, can forward the campaign to their friends. The progress of the campaign is mapped, so every forwarder can see what happens to her requests, and how much money is donated at each layer. In essence, fundraising becomes more fun.

BlueSwarm is in the process of relocating to Silicon Valley, where it hopes to recruit some of social media’s finest. And small-time fundraisers aren’t the only people getting on board. Just look at Meg Whitman, a California gubernatorial candidate who has collected $20 million for her political campaign through BlueSwarm. Clearly they’re onto something.

A Smarter Twitter

Twitter wants to read your mind. Okay…that may be an exaggeration, but Twitter does want to gage your intent to purchase. Compass Labs, a startup specializing in targeted social network advertising, has cooked up some algorithms to analyze tweets and decide whether or not the author wants to buy something. For example, if I were to tweet “Dog ate my Wii Remote; need a new one,” Twitter might show me an ad from a retailer selling game equipment.

Luckily, these ads don’t show up directly in the Twitter stream, but in the dedicated ad space on the webpage, so I doubt users will have any gripes. There shouldn’t be privacy concerns, either, since anyone who’s tweeting is making the information public anyway. Sounds good to me!

My Two Cents: The Social Network

If you’re reading this blog, chances are good that you’ve heard of the in-production film The Social Network, or, less officially, “That Facebook Movie.” If you haven’t, check out the first live action trailer, which was released last week.

While it might seem ridiculous to turn a website into a two hour drama, Facebook is emblematic of the entire social media phenomenon, which has revolutionized how millions of people communicate with one another across the globe. Successful movies have been made of much leaner stuff. But maybe I’m biased because I happen to think Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg) is the man. In any case, it’s something to look forward to.

Extra Bits

• Facebook is on course to hit 500 million users this week, marking a huge milestone for the social media giant.
• Zynga’s most recent release in online gaming, Frontierville (cousin of Farmville) hit 20 million monthly users in only five weeks. Ten million users have already clobbered a snake!
• Rumor has it that foursquare has been talking to big Internet players like Google and Yahoo. Information is scarce, but I’d bet there are some cool services coming your way.

You know what else is coming your way? Thursday’s blog post, compliments of Lucie Z.