Introducing “Causes on Facebook”

May 24, 2007 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

updated

projectagape2.bmpSerial entrepreneur Sean Parker’s new philanthropy focused company, Project Agape, launches tonight, with a special version of its software tailored for Facebook users.

It is called Causes on Facebook.

Just as significant as its launch, however, is its intent to showcase the strengths of Facebook’s new “Platform,” a set of tools to allow developers to build applications upon Facebook. More on that in a second.

Project Agape is the most ambitious social network we’ve seen that lets people mobilize around causes of their choice. It has been secretive until now, providing a sneak preview to a handful of people, including VentureBeat (see coverage). Even today, its release for Facebook’s platform is a limited one. A more extensive version will be released next month.

A competitor, Change.org, launched just two days ago (see our coverage). That network focuses on political change. Its service tries to tap users to choose slates of politicians and other recommendations to effect change. But that site is bare bones, and still has relatively few users.

While Agape too is new, its advantage is formidable. Its software is by far the most integrated of any third-party company into the Facebook platform. Any of Facebook’s more than 24 million users can select Agape from a menu, and with one-click install it on their Facebook toolbar for continuous use. See early screenshots at bottom.

Here’s how it works:

Called “Causes on Facebook,” it allows you to create a cause, or promote an existing one to their friends You can pick from 1.5 million non-profits in the U.S. It uses Facebook’s “feed” feature to notify friends when you’ve joined a new cause. Finally, it allows you to promote the cause in other ways, building up points through a reward system, letting you show off virtual trophies that you win on your profile page after say, donating money. Ultimately, it wants to make it easier to raise money for causes. It launches with formal partnerships with ten non-profits.

It plans to use Facebook’s “social graph,” or the network of relationships users have with their friends, and their friends’ friends. The point is to mirror real life, where activists and other fund-raisers reach out to influencers and ask them to reach out to their own followers. (We wrote about this in our first post). Facbook Photos and Facebook Events have done well by building on this. “Cesar Chavez would ask a farmer to gather their friends in their hut, and he would talk to them,” explains Joe Green who co-founded Agape with Parker.

The two go further, arguing that young people have become alienated from political and social causes precisely because there has been no way to mobilize online. They point to an “erosion of social capital” caused by modern lifestyles. A decline in local chapter-style organizations has left a void, they say.

Parker’s convinced this will work because Facebook’s users exhibit a higher level of engagement than most sites. About 50 percent visit the site daily, with an average use-time of more than a hour.

One advantage Agape has is how it sits on top of Facebook’s platform. New internet companies find it hard to attract users from scratch. Most try a “sucking” strategy. Photo, video and other companies, for example, let users place so-called widgets on sites like MySpace, and by trying to suck those users back to their own sites with links, registrations and so on. Agape’s method is different because it seeks to remain native to Facebook, with style and features that make it look like just another Facebook application. It uses Facebook’s mark-up language, “FBML.” Its icon is similar to that of Facebook Photos and Groups.

The close partnership stems from Parker’s relationship with Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook. Parker was an early collaborator at Facebook, before leaving the company more than a year ago. Green, meanwhile, was Zuckerberg’s roommate at Harvard.

“Causes on Facebook,” is just one of 80 applications built by 65 companies on Platform. Zuckerberg announced more details about the platform just now during his keynote address. He emphasized that Facebook will encourage companies to make money from advertising and other transactions, giving them free access to the “canvas” pages of their applications to do as they please. This contrasts with the more closed nature of other networks, such as MySpace, which notoriously shut down access to Photobucket when that company tried to promote sponsorships. Zuckerberg also called on to the stage representatives from Microsoft, Amazon and Slide to announce integration partnerships.

Update: One attendee, I think it was Saar Gur from Charles River Ventures, went so far as to say this might represent the “end of Web 2.0.” Most new consumer Internet companies will feel forced to launch from within Facebook, because of its huge base of young, interested, experiment-happy users. If you can’t succeed there, can you hope to do so outside? So Facebook becomes the platform. Provocative thought, and clearly an overstatement, but it stayed with me.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Interesting idea, especially if social pressure plays a factor in encouraging more donations.

    I can even see an online dating angle here, using the service to find others with similar passions.

    I just hope they keep it broad enough (1.5 million non-profits sounds broad enough) to include everything from Greenpeace to the NRA.
  • It’s time for Face Book to Pay Up.

    The End of the Plantation system.

    I would like to help a bit in bringing about a new era on the Internet. We can call it web 3.0, or 2.5. I will leave the definition to others that are better at this kind of thing.

    This will be the era of a true revolution in the power of site members. An era where members have the power and the ability to be rewarded monetarily for the value that they add and the revenues that are generated from their work and participation.

    The recent announcements by Face Book that they are going to be the next OS, or the next platform, or the next goggle, reeks of egotism and self indulgence as well as a master slave mentality. In the bravado of the announcements that spewed forth from the reality distorted world of Face Book what was left out was the untold fact that Face Book would have little or no value if it were not for it’s 25 million members.

    The hard fact and truth of the matter is that Face Book makes hundreds of millions of dollars off of the backs of its 25 million members and has no plans to share the true wealth (money) of the revenue they generate with them.

    Does Mr.Zuckerberg or anyone at Face Book believe that they add more value to Face Book than the 25 million members ?

    If the answer is no then the revenue generated and the value added to Face Book should be shared monetarily with the members that have have generated the revenue and added the value. Without the members Face Book would have little or no Value.

    We now live in a technical age where a close to approximate monetary value can be assigned to the value and revenue that Facebook members add to the company. This fact can no longer be hidden, it can be found and it should be known by all of the members that generate the wealth and revenue.

    Why cant we see a graph on Face Book that discloses to the members the amount of revenue that is generated from them in terms of revenue generating partnership deals and advertising ?

    Why cant Facebook give an equitable portion of its ad revenue directly to its 25 million members ?

    Of the revenue that Face Book generates, as a percentage how much is given back to its 25 million members in a monetary form ?

    The advertising revenue that is generated by Face Book come from the actions of the 25 Million members, not the Face Book staff, so the members should receive the lions share of the revenue

    How much stock in the company do the 25 million members that generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Face Book own. Because the 25 million members generate most if not all of the revenue and value for Face Book, shouldn’t they all be stock owners ?

    As a group the 25 million members add value to the company and generate revenue, as a group they should own stock in proportion to the vaue that the add and the revenue that they generate.

    How much is Microsoft paying Face book for the rights to serve ads to Face Book members? Since the value of the ad deal is probably based on the amount of members that face books has, it would make sense that the members should be given a share of the money that Microsoft has paid to Face Book for the rights to serve the ads. Mr Zuckerberg and the rest of the Face Book team should give the 25 million members the money they deserve for the value that they add to Face Book.

    If yahoo would have acquired face book for one billion dollar, would any of this money be given to the 25 million members that have given Face Book the one billion dollar valuation ?

    For a one billion dollar acquisition that is by and large based on membership size as well as advertising revenue generated by the members; it seems that giving each of the 25 million members 1 million dollars would be an almost equatable reward for their participation.

    There is little difference between how Face Book treats its members and the share cropping schemes that were used to generate wealth for rich land owners on the backs of poor people and slaves. At least in the old share cropping schemes the works received a small portion of revenue, in the current situation members receive none of the revenue from the content that they create. Face Book and other sites that do not share the revenue and wealth that members create for them do not understand that the times have changed and the plantation game will no longer work. Now members have the ability to leave the plantation and to either create their own communities or to become members of communities that will pay them an equitable portion of the revenue and value that they create. This is one of the key revolutions of technology. There are no barriers to owning the means of production. Members are the means of productions, and are the value add. The pyramid that had members who are content creators and add value on the bottom has now been turned upside down. Unlike slaves that could not break free of the wealthy plantation owners bonds, members now have the ability to demand their equitable share and if they are not given it they can leave without retribution.

    It is time that members demand to be equitably rewarded (in the form of money) for the revenue and value that they generate.The 25 million Face Book members as a group should demanded to become stock holders and to be given a part of the revenue that they generate from advertisement clicks as well as a portion of the revenue that is generated from partnership deals based on their action and their numbers . If the members do make this demand and they are not rewarded in an equitable manner they should leave Face Book and any other site that will not reward equitably for the value and revenue that they generate.

    From Wikipedia

    “Sharecropping typically involves a relatively richer owner of the land and a poorer agricultural worker or farmer; although the reverse relationship, in which a poor landlord leases out to a rich tenant[2] also exists. The typical form of sharecropping is generally seen as exploitative, particularly with large holdings of land where there is evident disparity of wealth between the parties.[attribution needed] It can have more than a passing similarity to serfdom or indenture, and it has therefore been seen as an issue of land reform in contexts such as the Mexican Revolution. (Sharecropping is distinguished from serfdom in that sharecroppers have freedom in their private lives and, at least in theory, freedom to leave the land; and distinguished from indenture in sharecroppers[][]entitlement to a share of production and, at least in theory, freedom to delegate the work to others.) Sharecropping is often described as a never ending cycle of debt.

    Sharecropping agreements can however be made fairly,[attribution needed] as a form of tenant farming or sharefarming that has a variable rental payment, paid in arrears. There are three different types of contracts.

    1. Workers can rent plots of land from the owner for a certain sum and keep the whole crop.
    2. Workers work on the land and earn a fixed wage from the land owner but keep none of the crop.
    3. Workers can neither work for nor get paid from the land owner, so the worker and land owner each keep a share of the crop.

    There are three different types of tenant farming. According to A. Alkalimat, renters who were to hire land for a fixed rental to be paid either in cash or its equivalent in crop values; share tenants, who furnish their own farm equipment and work animals and obtain use of land by agreeing to pay a fixed percent of the cash crop which they raise; share-croppers who have to have furnished to them not only the land but also farm tools and animals, fertilizer, and often even their own food, which they had to pay back with a larger percentage than shared tenants. Tenant farming was a way in which to keep African Americans and other poor groups under control but make them feel like they had some importance. Though many blacks participated in tenant farming they still were looked at and labeled as the lower class.

    Because of the high rate of illiteracy among blacks at the time, they were often taken advantage of. Poor, illiterate and intimidated by post Civil War violence, many former slaves agreed to sharecropping contracts that were designed to keep them poor [PBS]. Eventually this exploitation led to violence. Courts would usually rule in favor of landowners when these incidents were brought to court.
  • Frank
    william please reach out to me so we can speak on this issue gio1725@hotmail.com