How Musicians Use Social Media to Inspire Activism [VIDEO]

A panel of musicians, marketing executives and media professionals joined the UN Foundation’s Executive Director of Global Partnerships Elizabeth Gore to explore how musicians and other celebrities can use social media to drive support for social issues. The panel, which included musicians Lupe Fiasco and Kenna Zemedkun, VP of Sustainability Marketing at ignition Simon Isaacs, Founder of Lovesocial Azita Ardakani, and Rolling Stone contributing writer Laura Checkoway, discussed previous challenges and successes involved in creating awareness for social causes and talked about how href="http://mashable.com/2010/01/04/social-media-tools-bands/">new forms of media — including Twitter — are enabling celebrities to href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/musicians-social-media/">rally their fan bases directly. You can watch the full discussion from Mashable’s and 92Y’s href="http://mashable.com/un-week/digital-media-lounge/agenda/">UN Week Digital Media Lounge above.

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Bing Rewards: Haven’t We Played This Game Before, Microsoft?

Microsoft, we thought you learned your lesson from the href="http://mashable.com/2010/06/04/bing-cashback-is-no-more/">from the failure of Bing Cashback. It looks like we were wrong. Earlier today, Microsoft launched href="https://ssl.bing.com/rewards/signup/SEGetStarted?form=MRWHPG&publ=Bingblog&%23038;crea=EML_MRWHPG_Rewards_PreviewPS0921_Bingblog_1x1" >Bing Rewards, a new program that lets users earn credits for performing actions like searching on Bing, making Bing their homepage and testing out new features. The more users perform these actions, the more credits they earn. Of course, there’s a catch — you have to download the “Bing Bar” (it’s a toolbar for Internet Explorer) onto your Windows machine and sign up with a Windows Live ID. We hope you’re running href="http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/" >Boot Camp, Mac owners. Overall, Bing Rewards is exactly like any loyalty rewards program you’ve used via your credit card or at your favorite store. Buy more stuff and complete certain tasks, and you get some miniscule reward. The program is clearly the successor to Bing Cashback, the now-defunct rewards program that gave you money for buying products through the Bing search engine. Cashback’s termination was announced in June, and it officially closed on July 30. We were hoping that Cashback would be the end of Microsoft trying to (directly) buy users, but it looks like that was hoping for too much. While the program seems like a decent enough concept, we just don’t think people treat search like they do their credit cards. Are thousands or millions of people really going to switch from Google and install a god-awful toolbar just so they can get a Zune? Microsoft, you’re wasting time, energy and resources on this rewards program. href="http://mashable.com/2010/09/15/bing-html5/">Awesome new features are going to help you win the search war, not Bing points and gift cards. Disclosure: Microsoft is a Mashable sponsor.

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/>Reviews: href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/393174-Bing" >Bing, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336661-Google" >Google, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336748-Internet-Explorer" >Internet Explorer, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/337174-Mashable" >Mashable, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/574203-Windows" >Windows More About: href="http://mashable.com/tag/bing/">bing, href="http://mashable.com/tag/bing-rewards/">Bing Rewards, href="http://mashable.com/tag/microsoft/">microsoft style="margin-top:10px;">For more href="http://mashable.com/tech/">Tech coverage:

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“Ask A VC” Guest Swap: Kopelman Out; Hirshland In

Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital was supposed to be my guest on “Ask A VC” this week, but called me this morning to cancel because his attorneys pointed out that doing press interviews while raising a new fund ran afoul of Securities & Exchange Commission rules. Oops. Filling in is Mike Hirshland- or “VC Mike” as he’s called.

Regular readers know the drill by now: Email your questions to AskaVC(at)techcrunch(dot)com. You can leave them in the comments, too, but I’ll prioritize the ones emailed, because they don’t give the guest time to prepare an answer. I purposely invite guests who are leaders in the field and are blunt. So don’t be shy. With a lot of developments in the world of venture capital this week, there should be plenty of questions out there.

If you don’t know Hirshland here are some facts, that may prompt more questions:

1. He is a partner at Polaris Ventures in Boston, but spends almost all his time in the Valley because he says that’s where the best consumer Web companies are. 2. He founded Dogpatch Labs– a bicoastal hang-out spot in San Francisco and New York to help give him a leg up on deal flow in this ultra-competitive world. 3. His investments include Automatic (aka WordPress), ThingLabs (aka Brizzly) and Quantcast. 4. Before Polaris he worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee that investigated Microsoft’s antitrust issues. 5. He’s sort of an over-grown frat boy. I say that with love. You’ll see what I mean Friday when the show runs.

Send your questions now! We’re taping early this week.

Mark Zuckerberg Donates $100 Million to Newark Public Schools

Mark Zuckerberg is donating $100 million to the Newark public school system. The donation will be the first part of a foundation intended improve U.S. education.

Zuckerberg will announce the contribution Friday on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he will be joined by Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/education/23newark.html?_r=1" >The New York Times broke news of Zuckerberg’s educational fund shortly before href="http://blogs.forbes.com/stevenbertoni/2010/09/22/facebooks-zuckerberg-now-richer-than-apples-steve-jobs/" >Forbes revealed that the Facebook founder and CEO had climbed to the thirty-fifth position on its annual list of wealthy Americans. Forbes estimates that Zuckerberg is now worth $6.9 billion, putting him seven spots above Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is estimated to be worth $6.1 billion, ranking 42 on Forbes’ list.

Some will call the donation calculated. The timing of the announcement is in sync with the October 1 release of href="http://mashable.com/tag/the-social-network/">The Social Network, based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires, neither of which protrays Zuckerberg in the most favorable manner. The donation could also be aimed at counteracting any negative stigma that could arise from his new rank on the Forbes 400.

The fact of the matter is that Mark Zuckerberg just donated $100 million of his own personal wealth to one of the country’s worst school systems. This is the sort of philanthropy that we see from the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates; frankly, it’s amazing to have someone else with the ability to contribute at that level to that field. Ideally, we should be able to take the gesture at face value and not taint it with speculation.

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Professor Says Michael Arrington Lives In An Ivory Tower (TCTV)

Last night, hundreds of UC Berkeley students like myself sat in a packed auditorium to hear Michael Arrington speak with visiting Berkeley scholar, entrepreneur, and TechCrunch contributor, Professor Vivek Wadhwa. What was expected to be a mild discussion turned into a heated debate. Wadhwa firmly disagreed with Arrington on key topics on the agenda for the night such as the worth of a college education and, you guessed it, women in tech. Arrington started off the talk saying what a room full of professors and college students dreaded to hear—that a college education can hinder instead of help the path of a brilliant entrepreneur. While he thought that for most of us college is a necessary stage for maturing, he half-joked that for the Zuckerbergs out there “The best thing in the world is to go to Harvard for a year and drop out. Everyone knows you were smart enough to get in”. For Arrington, great entrepreneurs are fearless daredevils who should be willing to take a risk as big as dropping out of college if they’re passionate about their cause. Wadhwa cited the valid example of small-time entrepreneurs who need a college education in order to survive, with Arrington rebutting that “if you think small, you end up small”. The normally mild-mannered Wadhwa became visibly impassioned about the dearth of women in technology. Wadhwa argued that Arrington lived in an “ivory tower”, oblivious to the ugly prejudice that Wadhwa has himself faced as an immigrant entrepreneur in North Carolina. Arrington admitted that as a white male, he could not speak about gender or race discrimination firsthand. Yet Arrington did point to his TC colleagues (and boss) as well as women in the audience who are living examples of the success and support women in tech are able to achieve. As expected, Arrington riled up the crowd with more bold statements and colorful analogies. You’ll have to watch to understand why he thinks “entrepreneurs are like pirates” or why he feels pressured to get a sex change. Chilean Minister of Commerce Juan Andres Fontaine attended the event and had some news after the debate. He announced a $40,000 grant the government is offering to qualified international entrepreneurs to start companies in Chile. Chile’s impressive pro-business, pro-immigration policy left many students in the audience thinking about packing their bags for South America and Arrington concerned about the potential loss of bright American minds to other countries with greater entrepreneurial opportunities. The arguing did make for great TV, but the most interesting part of the lecture were the undeniable words of wisdom Arrington and Wadhwa had for their young audience. A piece of advice both panelists agreed on was to never forget the importance of ethics. As Arrington said, “Never hurt anyone to benefit yourself…but do something amazing, however you define it, and change the world”. That advice also serves as an important tip for young entrepreneurs hoping to gain exposure on TechCrunch: aim to change the world, because as Michael said “I’m not interested in the people who aren’t”. Thanks to CalTV and camerapersons Matt Grobar and Tiffany Hsu for providing the video.

 

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