Question: How could the new Facebook feature benefit charities?

The next feature that Zuckerberg’s empire is rolling out is the answer to a new user trend: Questions.

The concept came from Facebook developers noting that people were using their updates to ask opinions of their friends and were receiving streams of replies, whether these attitude seekers wanted answers to queries, ‘Where is cool to go out in London?’, or to get to know their Facebook comrades better, ‘Who would you most like to be trapped in a lift with?’. Facebook has since created and tested the feature that allows people to write a question and see each individual response from both their friends and their wider networks; a peer to peer survey of things that are important them.

“The answers to these questions are meaningful or interesting because you know your friends and your friends know you,” said Adrian Graham, on Facebook’s blog.

It’s pretty inevitable that the younger cross section of Facebook account holders creating questions along the line of “Who’s the most popular at [Name of] School?” or “Who does [Name of victim] fancy from our class?”, but what is the potential for charities to harness the frank, real time opinions of their online communities?

Perhaps they could use this opportunity to create unceremonious focus groups that could shape the way they think about their campaigns? Maybe they could use it to differentiate themselves in the market amongst similar charities? A potential benefit to this is that it could allow for charities to cast a wider net, seeing the opinion of not only their fans, but also the friends of those existing supporters.

There is a danger to this kind of post, some could find this kind of constant ask intrusive and spammy and, as with any big trend, existing supporters may associate the feature with the most low brow update they receive from their brashest companions.

Do you think it’s possible to harness the potential of Questions?

Google announces NFC for Android

Google has caught the eye of new media wonderers again this week. Teamed with Mastercard and Citigroup, it is set to create a near-field communication payment system on Android phones within the year.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the technology would allow those customers who have downloaded a special app to make in-store payments simply by swiping their Android phone at a reader, turning your phone into, ‘a kind of electronic wallet’.  Google’s role would be to give retailers data about their customers in order to help them target their ads more efficiently. Google will then profit from selling these ads, rather than taking a cut of the fees.

Nick Holland, mobile-transactions analyst at Yankee Group, said of the innovation:

“Because it’s contactless there’s a perception people can grab it from thin air, but it’s actually a more sophisticated technology than credit cards with a magnetic stripe, making it more difficult to steal a consumer’s payment information.”

Because we look at the world through philanthropy-tinted glasses, the question this immediately raised in the beautiful world office was, ‘How could charities benefit from this new technology?’ Could it become a new platform for quick and easy donations? Perhaps the tabard-clad, face-to-face fundraiser or charity tin-shaker on the corner of your street will get a NFC reader to appeal to you with? Or maybe there’s potential for charity shops? If you’ve got any ideas you’d like to share, do add them in the comments.

It is also rumored that Apple is working on a similar system for their iOS devices. Because this type of technology would have to be built into any new systems, the potential is for the iPhone 5 to pilot their NFC functionality. However, release of the iPhone 5 has been reportedly delayed and will not be debuted in Summer, as originally expected.

Google adds ‘Plus One’ to search

Facebook ‘Like’ buttons could soon see some competition from Google’s own version of social approval: ‘Plus One’. The service will allow users with a Google account to recommend content in search results to Gmail, Buzz and, eventually, Twitter contacts. There has been no comment on whether the service will integrate with Facebook.

Google is working with publishers to get ‘Plus One’ buttons included in stories, but doesn’t sound like the service will be as widespread as Facebook ‘Like’ buttons. I’m also struggling with the logic that you ‘Plus One’ a story from the search results, presumably before you’ve read the content you searched for… ?

Google has also intimated that ‘Plus Ones’ will be incorporated into search rankings. How much search results will be influenced, though, remains to be seen.

LinkedIn reaches 100 million members

In the wake of recent figures published by the likes of Facebook and Foursquare about their ever-increasing user numbers, LinkedIn has just announced reaching one million members. Put into context, LinkedIn is around one sixth the size of Facebook and almost two-thirds the size of Twitter.

I wonder what value there would be in testing buying ad space on this network compared to Facebook or Google, now that this has recently been made available? We never previously believed that LinkedIn had any great potential for fundraising – although we’ve seen a couple of seminars recently where speakers have included it within that context, one of which suggested using it to make approaches to corporates (sounds like that could be a bit spammy and surely a phone call and email or letter would be more appropriate?).  However, the opportunity to buy advertising space could make it useful for for highly-targeted, niche campaigns – acquisition for events fundraising is one area we can foresee being worth exploring.

NFPtweetup 11

The next NFPtweetup is only just round the corner but the buzz is already palpable. For those that haven’t heard, the next event will be held on 25^th May at Amnesty International UK’s HQ. Tickets will be available soon, so be sure to keep up with @NFPtweetup so you don’t miss out!

Tags: Android, beautiful bytes, digital, Facebook, Facebook Questions, Google, LinkedIn, NFC Payments, NFPtweetup, NFPtweetup 11, online, Plus One, search, social media, social search