5 Easy Ways to Support a Cause Through Your Social Network

Collecting money for posting advertisements on your Twitter feed, Facebook wall, and other social media profiles might not be the best way to win friends (or followers) and influence people.

But your network is likely to be more forgiving, and even encouraging, if you are promoting a good cause.

The following five websites can help you collaborate with brands to support your favorite charities by endorsing their products on your social network.

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1. Endorse for a Cause

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This website can turn your online shopping habit into a fundraiser for the cause of your choice. When you visit one of Endorse for a Cause’s online retailer partners, you can send a tweet or Facebook update with an endorsement of brands or products that you like. You decide exactly what to say in the message, though starter tweets that begin with phrases like “I’m a fan of…”, “Shopping for…”, and “Help me help…” are provided.

When your friends click on your endorsements and make purchases, Endorse for a Cause receives a portion of the money and allocates about 70% to your cause. You can track how much money you’ve raised on Endorse for a Cause’s personal home page and earn badges for participation. Right now there are only about 10 cause choices, and they are primarily large charities like the American Cancer Society and the Humane Society. You can, however, vote to add a cause if yours isn’t yet included.

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2. Rec.fm

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Create a “Rec” for a product you love by telling Rec.fm exactly what you like about it. The site will generate a short URL that you can share on your Facebook or Twitter profile. When your friends click on it, they’ll be taken to a Rec.fm site with more details on the product. If they choose to buy the product, Rec.fm receives a payment from the retailer and more than half of it is passed on to the charity of your choice. You can also add a tab to your Facebook profile that shows your friends all of your “Recs” in one place.

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3. SixDegrees.org

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The idea behind the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is that everyone in the world, including the prolific actor, is connected by no more than six steps of acquaintance. Although not initially pleased with the name of this game, Kevin Bacon decided to put its philosophy to use for good causes by starting SixDegrees.org.

The website partners with Network for Good to offer individuals the opportunity to create charity endorsement widgets called “fundraising badges.” These badges can be placed on their social networking profiles, blogs and websites. People who visit their sites can donate to the endorsed charity via the widget.

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4. adCause

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The platform adCause gives you a little more control over the money you can make from Twitter. While structured as a network where publishers (tweeters) and advertisers can sync up and seal an advertising deal, you can decide what percentage of your profits should go to charity and what percentage you want to keep. You can also split your profits between different charities.

Unlike other sites, however, advertisers need to select you based on the tweets you create. These “adspot” profiles include a short description of what you usually tweet about, how long you would be willing to advertise a product, how often you would tweet about a product, and how much you would charge for this service (the site suggests about one penny per follower).

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5. SocialVibe

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SocialVibe donates money to your selected charity based on participation in branded activities like surveys. A Facebook app encourages your friends to help by completing the same activity. Your friends earn points, and therefore donations for your charity by completing the activities that you post.

You can also integrate a widget into your WordPress or Blogger site.

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More Social Good Resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Social Good
- 10 Ways to Start a Fund for Social Good Online
- Why Social Media Is a Game-Changer for Causes
- How Social Good Has Revolutionized Philanthropy
- 5 iPhone Apps to Help Fight Poverty

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Sveta

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, blogger, iStockphoto, rec.fm

More About: adCause, advertising, advertising on Twitter, charity, Endorse for a Cause, rec.fm, Recommendations, sixdegrees.org, social good, social media, social networks, socialvibe

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What’s up with the Twitter prank?

 

Facebook to Make Games Less Annoying, More Engaging

John wants to share some level seven Energizing Lotion in FarmVille! How many times have you seen a similar sentence in your Facebook News Feed and either wondered what it means, or (if you’re familiar with Farmville and other popular Facebook games) removed the message in disgust?

Facebook is aware of the problem. While some users — 200 million of them, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed at a Gaming Event in Palo Alto — enjoy playing games on the service, others aren’t interested. According to Facebook, users either “love playing games or hate them,” and the company so far didn’t have “the right tools to enable developers to grow their games while at the same time providing a great user experience for non-gamers.”

Thus, Facebook has devised a plan to make games less annoying to non-users, and more engaging to gamers at the same time. The first part is relatively easy: Facebook will only show application stories to users who are already engaging with the application, meaning that people who don’t play Farmville won’t have to endure Farmville-related posts in their feeds.

If Facebook decides you are interested in games, it will be displaying full game stories (instead of collapsed ones) in the News Feed, as well as adding prominent counts to those stories to highlight tasks that need to be completed within a game. Bookmarks will get smarter — apps will be automatically bookmarked and reordered based on actual usage. Finally, Facebook will start notifying users when their friends start playing a game (in addition to highlighting their activity within the game).

From the users’ perspective, these are welcome changes, especially for non-gamers who won’t be pestered by constant game-related notifications. From the game developers’ end, it remains to be seen whether these improvements will alleviate the fact that gaming-related notifications will now be less aggressive than before.

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Reviews: Facebook

More About: facebook, games, gaming, social games, social media, social networking, trending

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Top 3 Stories in Social Media and Tech This Morning

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.

RIM to Unveil Tablet Next Week, Sources Claim

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) could unveil its forthcoming tablet, a.k.a. “the BlackPad,” as early as next week, sources familiar with the matter have told The Wall Street Journal.

The tablet, which is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of the year, has a seven-inch touchscreen and one to two cameras, the same sources claim. It will also have Bluetooth and broadband connections, however the device will only be able to connect to cellular networks through a BlackBerry smartphone, they said. It is not yet known which carriers or retailers will sell the device.

The sources also say that the tablet will run not on BlackBerry 6, but on a new platform built by QNX, an OS maker RIM bought earlier this year.

Facebook Reorganizes Game Applications

In addition to revealing that more than 200 million people play games on its network every month, Facebook announced a series of changes to its games platform late Tuesday. The changes are designed to drive further engagement and discovery among those who are active gamers on Facebook, while keeping their gaming habits out of the newsfeeds of non-playing friends.

Google Sues Illegal Drug Pushers

In an attempt to help rid the web of scammy ads for rogue online pharmacies, Google has filed a civil lawsuit against advertisers it believes have deliberately violated its policies by offering to sell pharmaceuticals without a prescription on its ad network.

“Litigation of this kind should act as a serious deterrent to anyone thinking about circumventing our policies to advertise illegally on Google,” the company said in a blog post.

Further News

• A 17-year-old boy from Australia has claimed responsibility for inadvertently triggering a series of events that led to the widespread exploitation of a Twitter security bug yesterday.
• Video ad network VideoEgg announced Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire blogging pioneer Six Apart, the company behind TypePad and Movable Type. As part of the acquisition, both companies will drop their names and be renamed SAY Media.

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Series supported by HTC EVO 4G

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This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.

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Reviews: Australia, BlackBerry Rocks!, Bluetooth, Facebook, Google, TypePad, video

More About: blackberry, blackpad, facebook, facebook games, first to know series, Google, research in motion, RIM, social gaming, Tablet

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For many companies exploring the idea of social media or taking the plunge into social media, it often makes sense to seek external help.

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