s.coop is owned by the Co-operative Press, so as a service its democratically and co-operatively controlled. It offers everything you’d expect (an API, Tweetie integration, a catchy URL and stats), and its co-operative nature is just another advantage.

s.coop is well worth giving a try. Not many people use it at the moment, so the URLs are all much shorter than those made by bit.ly or TinyURL!

Whilst people would likely donate to sponsored events even if tools like JustGiving did not exist, sites like that make it much easier to collect donations from distant sources (like friends hundreds of miles away). Sites like JustGiving have developed Facebook apps, so that new technologies can work with them. JustGiving is unfortunately not a free service, and charges charities £15 a month and charge a transaction fee per donation (this is about 5-6%, plus card processing fees). It could be cheaper for some charities to process transactions directly, but I don’t think this is really an unreasonable fee.

I find things like the Causes app much more interesting. They cleverly integrate the social element of it with a fundraising one. However, form my observations, it can have very different results. The amount donated per cause member wildly differs.

Causes with specific fundraising aims, or which serve a select audience, seem to perform better. For example, a Cause that aims to buy a bus for an Indian orphanage has raised over $2,500 with less than 60 members (about $50 on average per member), whilst a Cause that aims to abolish the death penalty has over 100,000 members, but has only raised about $1,000 (less than a cent per member). Whilst it could be argued this due to the moral problems some people may have, much less controversial causes like a cancer prevention one suffer a similar fate: it has over 5,000,000 members but has only raised $130,000 (about 2 cents per member). Another cause, which aims to buy mosquito nets has 15,000 members who have donated over $25,000. Donations seem to be made more generously when the donors know what it’s going to be spent on (whether a bus or mosquito nets!), but less generously on bigger causes with no specific material item being purchased (whether this be opposition to the death penalty, or cancer research) don’t get as many donations per member.

Some charities try to make giving more fun through the Internet, too. UK homelessness charity Shelter allows donors to buy a virtual house from £10 on their website, which can then have a picture, link and message when clicked on. This is advertising in the spirit of the Million Dollar Homepage, but mixing in a charitable element. Innovative, but virtual land isn’t exactly in short supply and you have to wonder how much money it raised for them.

Online giving seems to work best on a small scale, with specific aims, whilst large general campaigns – whether fighting cancer of abolishing the death penalty – will get lots of supporters, but not as much money per supporter!

I have found the Internet makes it easier and more interesting to donate money, but I’m sure some charities could get more donations if they better used it.

Why is OpenID not more popular then, when it is probably a safer and more reliable option? It might take a bit more work (registering with a service provider and then linking to this in the header of the HTML of the user’s webpage), but it isn’t exactly a huge amount of work. I don’t know how difficult it is to implement an OpenID log-in properly; dozens of plug-ins exist for many pieces systems like WordPress (I removed it here due to issues getting the log-in styled properly… not really a technically limitation!).

Why are more and more systems embracing proprietary log-in systems like OAUTH or Facebook Connect, but neglecting to include an OpenID log-in? Many sites, like AOL, are OpenID providers but then fail to accept OpenID themselves. It’s perfectly good having hundreds of providers, but little use if the major sites which provide these identities actually refuse to then accept them!

OpenID should be pursued, whether instead of or in addition to services like Facebook Connect and OAUTH. Better yet would be for Facebook and Twitter to accept and offer OpenIDs, of course!

£25 for a piece of software, even one as important as an operating system, is much more realistic than a £100 pricetag. I think it is unreasonable to ask personal users for anything more than £60 or£70

High price tags force people to piracy, yet for many years companies like Apple and Microsoft continued using them. I suspect Adobe loses a small fortune over its £600 charge for Photoshop, because I imagine that most of their end-users actually acquired the software illegally. Adobe kindly charge students a discounted rate of only £150: how they expect a student to afford that amazes me.

High price tags force people to piracy.

I have no problems pay $10 or $20 for a decent piece of shareware, and I often buy bundles of discounted shareware, but I dislike being expected to pay a fortune for a commercially-developed program which has hundreds of features which I’ll never even need to use.

Microsoft try to offer users packages containing only software they’ll need, but this confuses many.

Only one package should be sold. That package should only include essential programs, with additional programs being sold individually if needed. Not only would this be beneficial to the average company, but would allow companies like Microsoft to accurately judge the popularity of software like OneNote based on the demand for it

Facebook fails to have a network for my urban area. If I want to join a geographic network, I have to join that of an urban area, Newcastle, approximately 40 miles away. A Facebook group with nearly 10,000 members exists that lobbies for my area to be made a network exists, but has it been done? No.

Other websites, like MySpace, fail to keep in touch with their users’ needs too. MySpace suffers from featuritis, having introduced pointless services like ‘MySpace Karaoke’ and allowing customisation to such an extent that makes the site inaccessible and inefficient.

Members need a big say in how social networking are operated.

Simply stating that if a site fails to meet the needs of its users, that they will stop using that site, is not a satisfactory solution. These sites are primarily a community comprising smaller communities (social networks), and if users leave for other sites, these communities are torn apart and social networking becomes even more time-consuming, as users must use several sites.

The solution? Co-operation: ‘an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise’.

If members owned the service they use, they could use their democratic voice to get features they want and to ensure that a positive user experience is maintained.

The securing of initial capital obviously proves a problem. However, if each member had to pay an amount – whether £1, £2 or £10 – for a share (and say in the site’s future), this could raise it. This might work especially well for niche social networks, as people willing to contribute to the site’s initial capital could be quickly identified and targeted. Niche networks have been known to rapidly grow. For example, Facebook was originally for students at Harvard and within one month, over half of that university’s undergraduate population had joined^{(see this article)}.

Paying for the upkeep of the site could be a problem too, but member-owners would be able to choose which revenue model they preferred. If the members were willing to pay to subscribe, they could democratically indicate their desire to do so. If members would rather face advertisements, they could democratically choose to do that. At the moment, if social networking sites were to make this decision, it would be somewhat experimental as they could not truly know what their members desired. Consequently, some sites use intrusive adverts, whilst others charge for membership in situations where it is inappropriate.

Of course, some social networking sites are already semi-democratic. Facebook had a ‘Site Governance Vote’ in April 2009, but this was only about changes to the terms of service (something I suspect most members aren’t faintly interested about). This vote was effectively useless. For it to be binding, it needed a 30% turnout. It achieved roughly 3%. Privacy International described it as a ‘massive confidence trick’. In a way, it was important topic on which to vote, but members should be able to vote on issues important to them, not just topics on which the company wants them to vote.

Social networking sites are communities, not just companies. A community should be democratically-controlled in order to ensure its needs are best met and that it can grow in a sustainable and responsible fashion, rather than a fashion in which the main aim is generating higher profits.