YouthNet blog

View from across the Atlantic...

Olly Benson — Mon, 1 Dec 2008 23:37:05 +0000

I've recently got back from a trip to the US. It was supposed to be a holiday, but a couple of things made it a bit more working, and a bit less holiday. Firstly, I've probably bored my colleagues senseless with my excitement at doing a spot of freelancing for the BBC on the night of the US election... being in a restaurant/studio overlooking Times Square when Obama got elected is something that'll never forget.

But along with the holiday bit, the other part of my trip to the States that counts as working was going to the YPulse Mashup in Boston. I've been a follower of Anatasia's youth media and marketing blog for a good couple of years now, even contributed a few times. So on the ridiculous notion that "you're in America. I'm in America" I dropped her an email to see if she was anywhere near me and we could catch up over a coffee. Better than that, she'd got a whole conference that slotted perfectly into my schedule.

So 36 hours after I'd witnessed one of the greatest election victories of recent years, I was in a sports hall at Boston University meeting a variety of people involved in youth media/marketing in the US. The whole conference has been successfully blogged and written up here, but here are a few things that I think YouthNet can learn from the conference:

Millennials/GenY (defined as those roughly of people born from 1980 until about 2000) have a totally different relationship with their parents to those born earlier (GenX). As a generalisation, GenY's are as likely to go clubbing and seek advice from their parents; whereas GenX's avoid their parents at all costs. The downside of this is helicopter parents.

GenY also have a totally different outlook on work: they know they being exploited so seek rewards in recognition of this fact. They totally blur the boundaries between work and home... they'll update their Facebook in the office but not think twice about checking their work email over the weekend. They also want regular praise (but then who wouldn't?)

We have a mobile version of TheSite.org – and we're planning for more of our interaction to be via wireless internet (but in the long term, it's unlikely to remain a separate entity to our web version). The US mobile phone model is different to Europe – and the popularity of SMS is about seven years behind us – but this doesn't sound that unfamiliar: girls text more, guys use mobile internet more.

In discussion about video, the panel said that "viewers value authenticity more than production quality", short videos work better than TV shows on the web (although the US doesn't have an equivilant BBC iPlayer) and that a lot of teens don't want to create video. Our multimedia editor, Chris Chapman, has been doing a lot of work on improving our video offering and the points the panel raised tie in nicely with what he (and the rest of us) have been up to.

Finally: two ideas to interest our fundraisers. Firstly, MyYearbook is apparently the fastest growing social network in the US. I don't know whether it will go mainstream this side of the pond, but it has quite an interesting funding model. In return for putting up with ads, users earn "lunchbox money" that they can turn into real cash to support actual causes.

Secondly, Virgin Mobile in the US has been running a pro-social awareness raising campaign on the issue of youth homelessness. In return for a text message, a hoodie was donated to a young homeless person. It's difficult to equate the equivalent easy win for YouthNet, but using mobiles to raise funds still seems like something worth tapping into.

The great thing about being an online charity is that we have a worldwide presence, even if our target beneficiaries are in the UK. Anastasia has already been bigging up YouthNet in Business Week, and more importantly referring young people who get in contact with her to TheSite.org. And we've been talking about joining a proposal to develop an application in partnership with another US organisation we like: YouthNoise.

Overall I think the thing I left the conference with was actually how (not surprisingly) the issues that our US-cousins are facing are pretty much the same as we are. If you change a few of the brand names, ignore the accent and don't mind that they say "mobil" where we say "mobile" there is very little difference between us.

Olly is Editorial Manager of YouthNet.

My new favourite video...

Olly Benson — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:58:56 +0000

Every so often something comes along and "blindsides you on a some lazy Tuesday afternoon" (as I believe Baz Lurhmann once said). Anyway, this dropped into my inbox, and I have to say it's totally changed my perception of one charity as a result. It's a bit long, but worth it for the pay-off and the simple message at the end.

Our ambitious plans for do-it.org.uk

Sam Thomas — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:02:59 +0000

We are very proud of our achievements at do-it.org.uk. Over the past eight years, with the support of our voluntary sector partners, we've built the UK's largest volunteering database, containing more than one million opportunities to volunteer.

But that's not all. We now have over 300,000 registered volunteers who apply for more than 30,000 volunteering opportunities with over 21,000 charities each month.

That's a lot of people, doing a lot of volunteering. But we're not ready to stop there. We believe volunteering can transform society, and we want to connect more people with the causes that need their help.

To help us do just that, we have launched a fundraising campaign that will help us revolutionise do-it.org.uk.

Some of our registered volunteers will have received an email about this campaign today. If you are one of them, I hope the email you received conveyed just how passionate we are about volunteering, and the difference it can make to the world.

We'll keep you updated on our plans for do-it.org.uk on this blog, but if you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions, why not add them as a comment to this post?

Skills London

Natasha Judd — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:33:49 +0000

The team's just come back from the first day of Skills London, a careers fair for 14 to 19-year-olds at the ExCeL centre. This is our third Skills event since September – and we've had stands for TheSite.org and the Life Choices consortium at each of them.

On TheSite.org stand, we've got a laptop with the website on show. We're handing out postcards and taking orders from schools and colleges. We're telling young people about the Respect? campaign and getting them to sign our pledge. With each event I'm getting better at describing what TheSite.org in a couple of sentences. Forget 15 minutes of fame – here we've got 15 seconds to attract someone's attention or they'll move onto the next stand.

The Life Choices consortium stand allows us to get young people's thoughts on this exciting new project, which has been funded by The Vodafone Foundation and v. We've got two panels on the back wall. One says, 'What life choices do you need to make this year?'; the other says 'What would make these choices easier?' Visitors write their answers on post-it notes and stick them on the wall. They can also use do-it.org.uk to sign up to be a volunteer as a website or marketing adviser or a content creator for the new website.

Fiona, Rosie and Kuljeet on the Life Choices consortium stand this morning
With each event, I'm getting better at judging how many bags of sweets we'll need for a day, how many pens we'll lose, how long it'll take me to set up the laptops. You'd think after a while I'd get a bit blasé. But the great thing about a live event is speaking to so many different people – some of whom have heard about us before, some of whom are learning about TheSite.org and YouthNet for the first time. It's totally exhausting, but somehow it's also energising and inspiring as well.

We'll be on stand E54 at Skills London from 9.30am-3.00pm tomorrow and 10.00am-4.00pm on Saturday if anyone out there in the blogosphere wants to come by and say hello.

Congratulations Jamie!

Sam Thomas — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:35:56 +0000

We had some news that put a spring in our step this today - one of our legendary Royal Parks Half Marathon runners, Jamie Markham, has been selected as Justgiving's "Fundraiser of the Month"!

Jamie went above and beyond the call of duty for YouthNet, raising well over £3,000 and recruiting another three runners for us in the process.

What makes this extra special for us is that the Royal Parks Half Marathon was our first "mass participation" fundraising event, and Jamie's contribution in terms of fundraising and recruiting other runners sent a long way to making the event a success for us.

In fact, you could say he really went the extra mile for YouthNet! (sorry - I'll get my coat).

Congratulations to Jamie and thanks to Justgiving for highlighting his fantastic support!

Newsflash: young people speak out

Sophie Manning — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:29:48 +0000

Even the most tough-nut, savvy Press Officer will tell you how difficult it is to influence the media. Imagine how powerless a young person with no industry experience feels to change what's in the news.

And yet quite a lot of what's in the news affects us. Reports swing between demands for tougher sentences on young criminals and polemic about the latest government policy to protect the young from themselves. Constantly discussed but rarely consulted, we're developing an image that we just don't recognise at all, and it's completely outside of our control.

Or is it?

YouthNet and the British Youth Council believe in helping young people to take control of their lives. That's why we started the Respect? Campaign, which has been seeking to end unfair representation of young people for over three years. This was our thinking:

Just like racism or homophobia, the current trend for youth-bashing is a form of prejudice. And like any other prejudice, it's not going to go away without a struggle. Of course those young people that go about their lives quietly doing good are not going to get the recognition they deserve, because at the moment they're not the ones writing the news.

The third phase of the Respect? Campaign is about admitting that it's really up to us to tackle misrepresentation actively. For some people, getting their opinion printed or published or even posted online would be like flying up to the clouds in an aeroplane and asking them not to rain. But it doesn't have to be like that. The campaign is providing information, guidance and suggestions about what we can do; here are some of them:

1) Tackle the mainstream media: writing a letter to the editor or posting a comment on internet news portals reaches a surprising number of people and can be quite a buzz.

2) Comment on blogs or start your own. The internet is a network of opinions where one person's views are as valid as the next. It's the news agenda, but not as we know it – open and democratic.

3) Volunteer: do-it.org has thousands of opportunities listed under 'Marketing, PR and Media'. By volunteering as a media assistant or doing shifts on your local hospital radio, you'll be getting yourself heard and gaining experience at the same time. Two birds, one stone, and no good excuses not to!

4) Sign our pledge to do some of these things: we're hoping 1000 people will join us. Join the Respect? Facebook group to find out more.

The big launch

After some practices (girls in front? Boys in front? People at the side? People holding it up?) we were joined by Martyn Lewis, the famous ex BBC broadcaster, to do his thing with the microphone. Once we'd all stopped messing about, we think the five or six photographers managed to get some nice, striking photos, while some of us stood on the street handing out flyers to young passers by, asking them to sign our pledge and get their voice heard too.

Getting noticed as a committed young person, and being at the centre of the media's attention for once, felt really good. Ok, maybe the front page was a bit ambitious...but a little effort could help other young people understand that it's our news too!

Today the weather was on our side as we launched the third phase of the campaign. Several members of the Respect? Young People's Advisory Group struggled up Fleet Street with a billboard designed to look like a huge newspaper front page. We wanted to go somewhere with a sense of the media's long tradition – a history we're hoping to change the digital age marches on.

Engaging the digital natives

Patrick Daniels — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 13:39:45 +0000

For the purposes of this piece, the digital natives are young people who have grown up not knowing a time when the internet and other digital technology hasn't been around. Let's focus on the opportunities that the internet is opening up. In particular:

The evolution of this new kind of online virtual reality
The step change in information and advice provision that the internet has enabled in a new more open society
The internet's social effects and how getting together in groups has got easier

Exploring the online virtual reality

Today young people are faced with living in a new kind of virtual reality- an online virtual reality.

It's important not to get carried away, virtual realities are nothing new: since humans have been able to imagine, virtual realities have existed. Art, fiction and dreams have all conjured up powerful 'virtual' realities down the ages.

But this new digital virtual reality is different.

It's persists (our lives lived in this virtual digital reality can stick around for a lot longer than we ever imagined)
It's searchable (not only does it stick around- we are getting cleverer at opening up this reality to new search technologies)
And it's coming to a home near you (anyone with online access can reach this information)

This is a virtual reality that is breaking down the conventional barriers between public and private lives. The boundaries between our public and private lives is blurring.

For example, who has a Facebook account with work friends and home friends, and has had some kind of situation where some of your home friends have posted a photo of you in a home friends kind of a party- and now your work friends get to see what you get up to at the weekend.

To give you another example, who checks private emails at work, or who gets work emails to a private email address?

Who knows who is reading your emails when you send them? You think you know, but how often have emails been forwarded on repeatedly to people the original sender of the email (you) never would have imagined might eventually read them? Who has hit the 'reply to all button' or replied to a group email list- thinking they were just replying to the sender?

Who has taken part in a online discussion in a chat session, discussion board or forum? Who do you know has seen what you wrote? You don't. Before, when you wrote an article in a newspaper or print publication or letter, you didn't know who read it either. The difference with digital is that we often kid ourselves that we do know to a greater degree than we should. Or may be our sense of security comes from far off and unclear consequences. This can lead to sharing parts of our private lives or thoughts that in days gone by we would never have dreamt of having done. In short, the line between our public and private lives is blurring.

As a result, if we want to engage young digital natives in our youth work, one of the first things we need to be able to do is consider their privacy and confidentiality. If you're looking at third party apps that are remotely hosted, the following offer options to limit access to the content you publish on the web:

Google Sites - allows you to create web pages and then control who can view and edit them. We've used Google Sites to set up a secure space online to help support peer advisors who answer relationships questions on advice service askTheSite
Vox - is blogging software that gives you the ability to set privacy controls for every post - let your friends see some, your colleagues others. You don't have to share everything with the world
Drop.io - allows you to fileshare simply, upload the files to a URL you create and then set an access password as necessary

Open Society

One of the things that gets people most excited about the web is that it promises to change our society. Let's get political for a second. One way of seeing society before the internet is to see it as a wheel or hub. At the centre of the wheel are the people who traditional have been the main sources of information in our society.

Information has been held centrally. However, since the invention of the printing press that model has progressively been challenged more and more. Now with the internet more and more people have the means to publish, the means to distribute what they publish and possibility to interact with their audience.

The possibility for access to all kinds of information we need in our day to day lives is unprecedented. Young people have an opportunity now, as we all do, to be empowered to make the choices that are appropriate to them in their circumstances.

For example, take financial information in a survey YouthNet conducted in partnership with Citizens Advice, young people told us that the internet was the first place they looked for financial advice, after parents and friends.

All this means today with potential access to an unprecedented level of information, we are faced with a new kind of problem: with this quantity of information out there now, how do we find the information we need, when we need it? In many cases it can seem like a case of information overload.

Three examples of where to start in the fight to make the firehose of online information manageable are:

Delicious.com - we've used Delicious to help manage the online resources we've collected whilst looking for support for our users to askTheSite, such as articles, videos, organisations and services
Advanced Google - may be pointing out that Google is a great way of finding needles in haystacks of info on the web is a bit like getting gran to suck eggs. However, many overlook a bunch of advanced Google features like restricting your search to a single domain or using related pages to pull up clean lists of similar organisations
Local advice finder - we offer access to UK Advice Finder (UKAF) for free on TheSite.org. UKAF is a database of advice services that the professionals use to identify support for their users
Socialmedian.com - is a brand new site just out of private beta that offers a fresh approach to collating and organising news information according to the topics and subjects that interest you

Group forming - getting social

The social effects of the internet are only really now being felt as this new technology is becoming bedded in to our technology today. Social uses of the new internet technology have in the past almost been an afterthought. Now, as Clay Shirky says in his book 'Here Comes Everybody', group action just got easier.

Shirky points out that one of the most powerful social networking tools on the internet has been the 'reply to all' button in email. It allows groups to be formed at the touch of a button. For the first time it was as easy to reply to everyone the sender of the message had contacted, as it was to contact the sender alone. This meant that groups could formed in an instant based on the fundamental equality that anyone could contact anyone else.

Now we're surrounded by social web applications like Facebook, MySpace and the others. But it's easy to forget that these have really only sprung up during the course of 2007. As far as designing a social web, it's really early days.

Shirky has done a lot to focus the debate on social effects of the internet. You don't need organisations to organize nowadays. A favourite example was the students who grouped together to campaign against the HSBC's decision to scrap its promised interest free overdrafts at the beginning of the student year in 2007.

What makes this new digital age of the internet particularly distinctive has been that not only can we publish and distribute quickly and easily; we can now congregate and interact with this content too. This means that any web page now effectively the seed of a new online community.

In the past, it's worth noting how many charities trace their beginnings back to a letter or article published in the pages of a newspaper, Amnesty International, War on Want and Rethink to name but a few. Now this same phenomenon continues but on a scale hitherto unimagined. Every news article published on the internet draws together people with diverse passions or interests by stimulating comments either directly on the same web page or indirectly on another blog.

Guide to Modding (moderating) on TheSite.org - Building community requires support for users, as well as security. In practical terms, this means that anyone who moderates needs to be able to offer support to users in need, not just to keep the community secure from spam or other kinds of abuse.

100 top learning tools - It's crucial to think through how we can make our opportunities for young people to engage also opportunities to learn. Jane Hart has one of the best run downs of great e-learning tools out there on the web.

Finally, the most important place to look for new web tools is of course from the young people themselves that we, as organisations, are hoping to engage. Sounds obvious - but in the new digital age whose social effects are only just being felt and understood, being driven by the needs and lives of young people is not just a question of good practice, it's about remaining relevant and being able to justify our existence.

What YouthNet staff get to after work (part 2)...

Olly Benson — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:07:58 +0000

Regular readers of the YouthNet blog (if such people exist) will have seen my post last week about me and 25 other colleagues spending an evening after work packing condoms to send out to TheSite.org users.

But that's not all we do outside office hours. As an organisation that champions volunteering, it was heartening to see from a recent staff survey just how many of us volunteer, and what diversity there is.

Here's an incomplete list :

Al Arabiyyah Al Islamiyyah
Alzheimers Society
Amnesty International
British Humanist Association
Cancer Research UK
CTT
Citizenship Foundation
Epilepsy Action
Fairtrade Foundation
The Food Chain
Friends of the Earth
Greater London Volunteering
GUCH
Guatemala Solidarity Network
Leukemia Research
Manor Gardens Befriending Scheme
Masjid-e-Umer Trust
Oxfam
Terrence Higgins Trust
RSPB
RSPCA
UNICEF
Waltham Forest Faith Communities Forum
Ummah Welfare Trust
World Vision
WaterAid
WWF
York Lesbian Arts Festival (YLAF)
Young Achievers Trust.

I can claim two of those.

A fundraising success story for the internet age

Sam Thomas — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:01:25 +0000

I'm sure you've all picked up on the British Humanist Association's campaign to raise £5,500 in order to run some ads on bendy buses in London.

To give you a brief summary - they reached their fundraising target by 10.06am on the first day of their campaign. As I write, they have now raised over £112,000.

This is obviously a hugely successful campaign, but one of the things I love the most about it is how it began, and the completely pivtoal role the web has played in it's success. The idea for the campaign came from Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine back in June this year. Pledgebank was then used to generate more support for the campaign, their justgiving page was set up (check out the Justgiving blog for some great stats on the number of donations) - and the result is a smashed fundraising target, acres of press coverage and a spate of similar pledges on Pledgebank.

Whatever anyone thinks about the campaign, it couldn't have happened in a pre-internet age.

Imagine the resource that would be needed to get this up and running using the phone, a pen and some paper. I also think that many fundraisers will be surprised that so many people have donated towards an advert on a bus - as opposed to wells, mosquito nets or vaccines.

So, whilst the end product (an ad on a bus) isn't particularly emotive, it is very tangible, it clearly resonates with many people and, most importantly for me, the campaign has created a sense of togetherness and being "in it together" to create something new.

What YouthNet staff get up to after work...

Olly Benson — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:26:05 +0100

Yesterday it involved condoms and beer (from TheSite.org blog).

Sex and the Scouts

Olly Benson — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:48:08 +0100

Was I the only person who saw the news that Scout leaders are going to start giving sexual health advice to the young people in their charge and wondered, not why are they doing that, but what have they been doing up to now?

Sex education in this country is rubbish. There are pockets of brilliance, but too often sex education is taught by people who don’t particularly want to, in the wrong setting (school) and in the wrong way (“I tell you this. You listen.”).

Youth workers aren’t just babysitters: they help young people develop as individuals through informal education. When I saw the headlines this morning, I couldn’t help wondering whether tomorrow the papers would be leading with “Firemen to fight fires”. Engaging with young people and educating them about their sexual health is *exactly* what youth leaders should be doing.

Much that I think PSE and Citizenship should be part of the national curriculum, it’s not enough to simply fit it between Maths and Geography with some fact sheets and the odd video thrown in to make it interactive. Young people need to be given the space, time and right environment to explore their identity, and youth groups are excellent places to be doing this.

So, congratulations to the Scouts for teaching sex education; but stop being so apologetic for it.

Olly

Only two more sleeps to go...

Felicity Jones — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:46:25 +0100

...until the big run. I haven't had a minute to myself this week to be able to create an interesting and newsworthy blog about what I've been up to in these last couple of weeks before the Royal Parks Half Marathon.

Instead as the dreaded day looms I’d just like to wish my fellow runners a huge good luck and a massive you should be very proud of yourselves, now run for your lives.

Finally a very special good luck to Dan and Sarah and if you are reading this and haven’t sponsored us yet please do so at www.justgiving.com/royalrun THANK YOU!

Online Cultivation & Stewardship

Sam Thomas — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:40:32 +0100

There's a lot of talk nowadays about stewardship, cultivation and online fundraising. Sometimes I think these terms are used interchangably and I get the impression that many of us aren't clear about what exactly they mean.

I'm always keen to get different perspectives on this, so I was interested to see The Gilbert Center's short survey covering these issues. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and the more of us that complete it, the more meaningful the results will be. He's the link:

http://news.gilbert.org/clickThru/redir/6731/rms

I'm particularly interested in seeing the results of the question about separate budget allocation for stewardship and cultivation - I'm not sure that this is something that most charities have thought much about.

Yay for us

Sam Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:54:43 +0100

Excuse the self-congratulatory tone of this post, but we've won awards a-plenty recently and we're really pleased about it!

First of all we won Fundraising Charity of the Year at the 2008 Professional Fundraising Awards, followed by the Open Internet Award at the Nominet 2008 Best Practice Challenge.

Then guess what happened? Yes, we won another one - this time Best Charity to Work For at the 2008 Charity Times Awards.

Pretty awesome huh?

New TheSite.org postcards now available

Natasha Judd — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:48:13 +0100

It's always exciting when the boxes arrive. Even when you've been working on a campaign for months, even when you know the graphic design of a piece of collateral intimately, even if you can recite the copy word-for-word, there's nothing like opening up that first box of postcards and holding that finished product in your hands.

Last week, we had our first delivery of the new TheSite.org postcards, designed by the lovely people at Point Blank Collective. Here's the front of four of them:

Chat-up lines may not be the best way to get a relationship started (refer to TheSite.org for more advice on that one), but they make us laugh and we think they're great for any sort of social setting.

If you're from a college, youth group or similar and would like some of these postcards to display in areas where 16 to 24-year-olds hang out, you can now order them through our online form.

The postcards have also started appearing in postcard racks in student unions and cafes around the country, as well as other venues here in London. They'll also be accompanying us to the Regional Skills events in Newcastle (30 September – 1 October) and Sheffield (8 – 9 October). If you spot one, pick it up and use it to enter our fantastic competition. There's a Sumo bean bag up for grabs for the winning entry.

We'll also soon be launching matching banner ads. They're just getting their final design tweaked, before being delivered - amongst similar levels of excitement - into our inboxes. I'll let you know when they arrive.

Do volunteers get drunk?

Olly Benson — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:38:52 +0100

Recently I heard of a volunteering organisation that has introduced a ban on its name or logo appearing on any clothing that will primarily be worn for socialising. As a significant number of their volunteers are students; the ban is particularly aimed at those going on group pub crawls etc. The organisation is worried about the negative association of their brand with a bunch of rowdy students off-their-faces creating their own pavement pizzas in the small hours.

I have no doubt that this organisation isn’t alone in introducing such a ban, and you can sort of understand the reasoning behind it.

But, given that one of the major findings of the Russell Commission (the inquiry caterpillar that turned into the V butterfly) was that most young people thought the image of volunteering needed to change, then perhaps it’s not bad thing that volunteers are seen to go out on the lash.

It might also help to dispel the notion that the young people out pubbing and clubbing on Friday and Saturday night are somehow different to those who give up their free time to do goodly deeds. Chances are they are often the same people.

Perhaps next year’s Volunteers’ Week should simply be a piss-up?

You only hear what you want to...

Felicity Jones — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:05:07 +0100

...the above phrase is something I have heard (mainly) the women in my life say many times in a number of different variations, 'you only see what you want to see' and so on. I think this is otherwise known as selective hearing, perhaps you only hear certain bits or in the case of the males in my life they only hear what they want to hear. This selective hearing thing is something I have really taken to heart when it comes to my training schedule for the Royal Parks Half Marathon. In particular I've found I'm pretty good at selective reading. So the 'manual' says the following:

The book says, 'eat a balanced diet' I read, eat anything you want, you are in training so why not, actually the more chocolate and chips the better.

The website told me to, 'run at a steady pace and speed up slowly'. I interpret this to mean run slowly, it's more important to get through it than to do it in a distant time.

My friend told me to, 'make sure you rest in between runs to eliminate chances of injury', surely their saying not to train very much.

The guidelines say, 'make sure you drink plenty of water', I prefer just drink plenty.

My point is despite all the advice I've heard and my training plans best efforts I've had to ditch it all as I'm simply not taking it in. With only three weeks to go panic is beginning to set in...

Be great...

Olly Benson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:50:32 +0100

This is a very good website from the states promoting getting involved / volunteering with Boys and Girls Club of America. I'm guessing it's aimed more at the adults than the kids...

And from a purely radio-anorak point of view; this is possibly the best use of soundscaping I've seen used on the internet.

Olly

Are you feeling the crunch?

Sam Thomas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:40:39 +0100

A couple of interesting news snippets caught my eye this week, in the midst of the current financial chaos.

Surprisingly, two of the three were good news stories. The first was Cancer Research UK raising a whopping £420 million in 2007/08, and the second was City Action's comments in the Sunday Times about volunteering by City employees being up by 40% on last year.

On the flip side, The Guardian reports today that charities are "reeling" from the impact of the current economic crisis.

Somewhat boringly for this post, it's probably too early to tell how great the effect will be on fundraising. One thing is definitely true though - the more eggs we have in different baskets the better. Cancer Research demonstrate this pretty well - their income pie chart is fairly evenly distributed, which should help them ride out the financial storm.

We've tried to broaden our income streams over the past few years for precisely this reason, and I certainly wouldn't feel that comfortable right now being a charity that's very dependent on donations from the private sector.

So, are any other fundraisers out there feeling the crunch?

What becomes of an ex-volunteer?

Olly Benson — Mon, 1 Sep 2008 09:24:09 +0100

Two months ago I left the organisation I'd been volunteering with since I was a kid. It was a fairly amicable split (at least on my part) and I'd been planning it for a while. The reasons that I left aren't that important (nor particularly interesting); what is more significant is what happens now.

When you leave an established job, unless you've been disciplined out or made redundant by evil new management, the chances are when you have your farewell drinks won't be the last time you remain in contact with the organisation or it's employees. The level you stay in touch is really up to you: from setting up your own consultancy that your old company then hires you back to do the work you were previously doing whilst in their pay, through to an occasional drink with your former colleagues when you happen to be near their office.

Good managers recognise that as an ex-employee you have tremendous knowledge and experience about what they do, and often it's a good idea to keep you on side. Quite often that's informal; I've occasionally taken calls or emails from my previous place of work asking "how did you do that when you were here?" or "can you remember the code for this thing?". And generally I'm happy to answer them.

But with volunteering it's a bit different. Because there is no payment involved, any contact you have with an organisation is "volunteering", and once you step down from being a volunteer for them, then it needs to be a total split. In a lot of ways, that's a good thing; otherwise you get the infamous voluntary sector workload-creep, and suddenly you find that despite leaving the organisation you are still doing things for them and worrying about them.

However, it also means that volunteer organisations aren't very good at building on best practice: if someone has been doing a role for a while and then leaves, you need them to be able to explain why they made the choices they did in their role, so others don't have to go through the same learning experience. Volunteers, like employees, can have huge knowledge bases about a particular area of your organisation's field of work.

And whilst employees have to give notice periods, volunteers can be here-today-gone-tomorrow. They can leave right in the middle of a project or event. I've known projects that have come to a standstill as a result of a key volunteer leaving. How many websites are there which haven't been updated since a volunteer webmaster quit – often forgetting (or refusing) to pass the login details on?

As for me - I'm not quite sure what my next move is. But, I've already had several invites to be involved in things for the organisation I left. On the one hand, it's flattering to be recognised for the contribution that I can make. On the other, I left for a reason. That should tell them all they need to know.

Do-It day

Olly Benson — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:03:52 +0100

The TUC have launched a new campaign to have a new bank holiday, and suggested that rather than it just being an excuse to get horribly drunk and regret it the next day; this day should be a Community Day where people would be encouarged to spend a day volunteering and doing something different.

Knowing most of the volunteers that I do, they'd be automatically volunteering on that day anyway (be it formally or just spending an extra day doing paperwork and all that other hidden volunteering that goes on). What we need it a way of encouraging new people to take up volunteering, to "do it" if you will.... perhaps having a really easy website where you could sign up to one million volunteering opportunities.

Therefore, and perhaps this is a bit cheeky---but it is the Friday before a Bank Holiday---I'd like to propose that it's not named Community Day, but Do-It Day.

Oh, and we've already got the website to support it: do-it.org.uk.

Changing TheSite.org

Olly Benson — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:48:00 +0100

Alongside our regular day-to-day stuff is another stream of work looking at how we change TheSite.org. There are various levels of work going on; including a fairly quick but quite major sprucing up of the look of the site, which you should see the results of in the next month or so. Beyond that there is a much deeper, bigger and more wide-ranging discussion about how we change TheSite.org.

So we've been running a blog for the last month at changethesite.org which hopefully will promote discussion both internally and externally about what we want to do with TheSite.org.

I'm glad to say that DK from MediaSnackers is the first of a number of external contributors we've asked to be involved. You can read his answers, plus some other thoughts and stuff at changethesite.org. And you'll find more information, plus ways to contribute, at the end of the blog!

Happy reading....

Olly

What's love got to do with it?

Felicity Jones — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:56:28 +0100

My other half has agreed to 'run' the first ever Royal Parks Half Marathon with me in October in a bid to raise some money for YouthNet.

Now neither of us is especially athletic nor have we ever committed to anything like this before, so it will certainly be a challenge for both of us. But hey we've been together a very long time so it will be a new learning experience, something we can do together and a great way for us to spend time together over these summer months. That's what I thought before we started anyhow!

In fact there are a few things I haven't mentioned, to begin with he is much taller and fitter than I am this means naturally his stride is far greater making him much faster, so for him to jog slowly is for me to sprint. This is a problem because he is always ahead of me, so whilst I try to play catch up (so that we can begin spending that time together bit I talked about earlier) my confidence is being kicked away by the backs of his heels. Note this is the first obstacle.

Secondly motivation was always going to be a challenge with this kind of thing, and believe me when it is hard enough to motivate yourself to go for a run the last thing you want to do is have to inspire your 'training buddy' to accompany you, particularly one that leaves you lagging behind!

Finally this running malarkey seems to be taking more time up than I had hoped (maybe because my miles are quite slow) so its fairly difficult to fit a 'run' in let alone fit it in both our diaries at the same time.

Despite all this we have now actually been training together for over a week (yes I am sticking to a sort of plan since my last blog) and I'm beginning to realise that maybe love has a lot to do with it. We need to be devoted to the plan if we are ever going to finish the course, we need to compromise with one another if we want to do it together, if we want to avoid any injuries we are going to have to start caring better for our bodies and finally on the day its going to be one another that will get us through to the finish line.

(Ahhh that was a very syrupy blog wasn't it, don't get me wrong next time we are out 'running' together I will be humming in my head 'here I go again on my own' grrrr)

There is not just a first time for everything

Felicity Jones — Fri, 1 Aug 2008 10:11:29 +0100

This is the first time I have ever written a blog and I feel quite anxious about the whole experience, what if I'm judged on my poor grammar and shoddy spelling? What if what I write doesn't make sense? But actually that is the least of my worries as this is also the first time I have ever 'run' a Half Marathon and that holds many more questions for me!

Despite all these concerns you'll be impressed to hear that I started training for this half marathon about two months ago now, you'll be less impressed to know though that I have now 'started' training at least four times in the last two months. So far the pattern has been to start training and go for regular runs for one week, then take two weeks off. That suits me quite well. But now as the big cloud that surrounds the month of October (which is when the run takes place) gets ever closer I realise I simply have to stop starting to train and just get on with it and train.

This sounds fairly easy but its not, motivation is very low, the weather has been very hot and it's simply too hard to inspire myself to go for a run when Eastenders is on. Yes enthusiasm is that low!

Alas I'm going to give this starting to train malarkey one more go, I'm officially going to start training next Monday and for real this time, that's it I've said it on a blog so it must be true! So here is to a weekend of over indulgence and relaxation before the training really starts. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it!

We know where's it's at...

Olly Benson — Fri, 1 Aug 2008 08:56:58 +0100

According to the Financial Times, Old Street has become the new centre of the new generation of web start-ups. From last.fm to the offices of new favourite (and burglar's paradise) dopplr; everyone who is anyone is based around what is being dubbed as the Silicon Roundabout.

And where are we based? Feathertstone Street, about a minute from Old Street tube station.

Changing the site...

Olly Benson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:32:53 +0100

We're doing a lot of work on TheSite.org at the moment... thinking about the future. You can follow what we're doing at www.changethesite.org. And if you want to contribute, let me know!

Cheers,

Olly

School's Out

Patrick Daniels — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:02:48 +0100

This summer you could imagine students meeting up and talking about their studies during the year: "I've just done a physics course at MIT, checked out an 'Introduction to Psych' at Yale and followed up with a well established course in non-violence at UC Berkeley".

All these courses are online and freely available in exploratory developments by US universities in the last two years to open up the content of their academic offerings. MIT, then Berkeley and then Yale. In the UK we've had the less impressive, but totally worthy Open Learn - an initiative from the Open University.

Taken together the depth of this content offers a glimpse into a more open and free learning world. This is ace and my only question really is why have we had to wait until 2008 for these kind of open learning initiatives to ripple outwards online? When you think about it, the academic world doesn't have the same excuses most of have had.

They have had loads of warning: many academics have been using internet-like tools since the 1980's.
They have had the resources: many academics have had access to the technical equipment, infrastructure and know-how for many, many years
They have had the motivation: many academics will do anything for an opportunity to share their passion and knowledge for their own area of interest and expertise

Why then haven't academics been in the vanguard of this transformation in the use of communication technology to broaden learning opportunities? It's a puzzle and the truth is I have no idea why not. 40 years ago in 1968, universities and educational establishments became a hotbed for new ideas and social change. In 2008, it's seems to be venture capitalists with fuzzy business models spearheading social change through developments in today's technology.

My personal theory for why educational establishments have been left behind by the communication and information revolution is the following:

It's all about how learning has traditionally been conceived by the educational institutions: education is something 'they' do to 'us'. As a result this makes the institutions' model of learning incompatible with the free and open platform offered by emerging technology. Hence the near absence of formal academic-led developments in free and open learning resources on the internet. It's corporates that are making a running with things like: Authors@Google, Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope and Ted Talks. But if educational institutions wanted to play the game, they could knock these out of the park, couldn't they. Couldn't they?

One sticking point seems to be that institutions and establishments need and want rights protection and the ability to monetize learning aka the education industry. It's no coincidence that the big US universities have financed their initiatives thanks to donations from wealthy foundations rather than using money from the central pot. Impressive as the above resources are that are currently available, surely we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible.

We don't need no edukashun. We want, what I think humans have always cherished: a free and open space to learn and share that learning (long before Pink Floyd made the point).

As for the future, the internet will be full of bolder and more mature free and open opportunities to learn and share knowledge, previously the domain of education institutions. The only question is who's going to lead the way and how we all access and benefit from this new meta learning environment.

Future of a free internet

Patrick Daniels — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:56:00 +0100

Yesterday an article appeared on the BBC news site about the big ISP's in the UK signing some kind of deal with the UK Government to combat piracy. This morning it was headline news across BBC radio and television. Fergal Sharkey was asked for the music industry's view, but no one asked us consumers.

It's shocking and disappointing how a public broadcaster like the BBC frames the debate in such outdated and simplistic terms. It's at moments like this that it's possible to see just how out of step big media companies and organisations are with the issues that the rise of new media has thrown up for consumers. Their focus tends to always be on the issues new media throws up for themselves- not us. To coin a phrase: it's about privacy, not piracy stupid.

Rarely is consumer privacy raised as an issue in the music industry's war on piracy. Will ISP's be expected to handover personal data of their customers? How will illegal file sharing be defined when, for example, anyone can download mp3s of any music they like from prominent websites like Facebook and YouTube? What sanctions will they take against file sharers? Will young people increasingly see the internet as a constraint on their liberty, rather than liberating?

It's interesting to contrast the broadly sympathetic coverage that the BBC has given to the music industry's efforts to clamp down on file-sharing (hey, it's not just music that people share these days), with it's coverage of the development of deep packet inspection (deep packet what?) by the advertising industry "a system that tracks where people go on the web, and builds up a profile so it can serve up adverts based on what that person has seen" (BBC's Click presenter Spencer Kelly).

Yeh, deep packet inspection (DPI), it's the biggest issue in net neutrality at the moment and most people haven't heard a thing about it outside of the tech pages in old style mainstream broadcasters like the BBC. For the last two years the technology has been secretly trialled and is set to come on stream officially in the next month or so.

Both these issues raise questions of consumers' privacy, and both developments seem to suggest that consumer privacy should be sacrificed in the interest of corporate needs.

In May 2008 on BBC technology programme 'Click', the BBC interviewed Kent Ertegrul and Alex Hanff. Ertegrul who heads up Phorm- a company looking to profit from DPI technology- had his "most notable foray online as the founder of PeopleOnPage, an ad network that operated earlier in the decade and which was blacklisted as spyware by the likes of Symantec and F-Secure".

Alex Hanff wrote his dissertation on the privacy issues of DPI technology with special reference to Phorm and has headed up the campaign against DPI in the UK. Hanff previously hit the headlines after being sacked from his job for airing pro file sharing views on BBC's Newsnight. He's also been the recipient of a lawsuit by Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros back in 2005.

The head to head brought together the opposite ends of the spectrum in the modern privacy debate- that encompasses corporate spyware developers and file-sharing facilitators. It's a mainstream debate that is currently marginalised by mainstream broadcasters. But anyone interested in the future of freedom on the internet should be sitting up and taking plenty of notice.

Half marathon training: What NOT to do

Sarah McCoy — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:07:43 +0100

About three months ago, having recently returned from a holiday in Australia, full of energy and enthusiasm, and evidently have lost the power of rational thought, I agreed to run a half marathon to raise money for YouthNet. At the time, October seemed soooo far away, and I was in the depths of a health-kick, ready to (literally) hit the ground running. The feeling was...ummm...short lived.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still up for the challenge and am really pleased to be representing one of the best charities in the world (with one of the best softball teams I might add), and raising much-needed funds for a well-deserved cause. I just wish it had dawned on me before last week how much hard work it's going to be.

Having realised last week that I really need to get myself into gear and get training, I put together a training plan (a somewhat condensed training plan, owing to the fact I should have started a few weeks ago). I went for a couple of runs last week, which went well. Dragging yourself out of bed at 6am to run around Streatham Common isn't the easiest thing to do, but it's very satisfying when you manage it.

My first 'big' run was scheduled for yesterday. I was going to tackle a 7 miler, having managed 5 miles quite easily the previous week. Now, at about 5 o'clock yesterday, I kitted myself in my best running outfit, complete with water bottle and iPod and headed for the hills. All seemed well for the first...umm...mile and a bit.

I could say it was too hot, but it really wasn't. I could say it was raining, but that would also be lie. I could say I haven't been well lately, but that would again be utter rubbish. I learnt something yesterday...

White wine, double chocolate cheesecake and marathon training REALLY don't mix.

Please learn from my mistakes folks.

Good luck!

A penny for your thoughts? Young people, debt & finance

Sam Thomas — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:29:54 +0100

We ran a very topical presentation here at YouthNet alongside Citizens Advice, the Financial Services Authority and HM Treasury a few weeks ago. The theme was young people, debt and finance, and the presentation covered some key points about how debt impacts on their lives, where they find information on financial advice and what their understanding of financial terminology is.

Most of what we covered was taken from a survey of 651 young people from TheSite.org. We got some great press coverage of the results of the survey, both here and in the USA, although interestingly (and perhaps not surprisingly), most articles chose to focus on one finding in particular – that 66% of young people surveyed agreed that it was too easy to get credit.

If you'd like a copy of the survey or want to hear more about the presentation, just drop us a line.

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Changes to YouthNet.org

Natasha Judd — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 12:46:24 +0100

If you're reading this blog entry on the YouthNet.org website (rather than on email or your RSS reader) you might notice that things look a bit different. The blog's centred for one thing. So's the whole website. On the front page, there are new 'latest news' links which scroll from one story to the next. And if you look towards the bottom of the page, there's a quote from one of our users or partners will change if you refresh the page.

There are also a couple of changes which you might not notice much, but which will help us better understand how people are using this website (such as the addition of the new Google Analytics code) and help us better process any queries we receive (through an improved contact us form). We've also changed the URL of the YouthNet blog feed, so that we can better monitor how many subscribers we have. If you've subscribed in the past, it'd be great if you could change over to using this new feed so we can include you in our stats. Using the new functionality, we'll also soon be creating RSS feeds for our job vacancies and press releases. I'll be back to let you know when these go live.

We've also introduced a sitemap, as another way of navigating round the site. Over the next few months, we'll also be taking a look at the content of YouthNet.org – making sure that it's easy to find what you need whether you've come to the site looking for information about running the Royal Park's Half Marathon or wanting to find out our current volunteering opportunities.

If you've got any feedback about the new features or have suggestions for the content/navigation review that will follow soon, please leave us a comment below.

Pick me! Pick me!

Chris Denholm — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 11:56:17 +0100

When I was about 10 or 11 all I ever hoped for was a Blue Peter badge. They were the holy grail of children's television and I wanted one more than anything. Every time the show ran a competition I was positive that my painting, poem or photograph would be deemed worthy of a badge. I used to scream at Anthea Turner and Tim Vincent to "Say my name", but they never did.

I had to wait until I was 12 until I received a letter that contained what I'd always wanted. I'd entered a Blue Peter poster competition for the London Underground and had drawn a Beefeater with a tube sign in the background. It wasn't anything special but I thought I might as well send it in; they'd probably reward me for my persistency if not for my artistic talents.

Twelve years on and my hopes are slightly more demanding; a house, a car, a £10 million pound lottery win. Who knows, maybe if I scream loud enough I'll get these send in the post as well.

In TheSite.org's latest survey we want to know your hopes and fears. Let us know and you'll get your own prize, a £5 Amazon gift voucher.

Do CRB checks deter volunteers?

Olly Benson — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:59:35 +0100

Yesterday think-tank Civitas published a report that said adults are afraid to interact with children for fear of being labelled as paedophiles.

The Home Office rebuffed the report saying that there was no evidence that vetting deterred volunteers, and that CRBs had stopped 20,000 unsuitable people from gaining work with vulnerable individuals.

As someone who's been involved in recruiting volunteer youth leaders over a number of years, I think Civitas have a point; and the Home Office is being naïve if it thinks that requiring people to undertake a CRB doesn't deter otherwise suitable individuals.

It's also not exactly true to say there is no evidence – NCH and Chance UK did some research last year and discovered that 1 in 5 people from BME communities are deterred by the CRB. Children's Commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green also told the Home Affairs select committee that potential leaders are being put off by criminal record checks.

Requiring someone to disclose their criminal past is a big ask for any organisation; especially right at the start of the process of joining. By the age of 35, 1 in 5 adults have been convicted for a crime, and of those 84% will be male. That means that nearly 1 in 3 men in the UK aged 35+ have been prosecuted or cautioned for breaking the law (Source: Hansard: Col 139, 10 Dec 1996). Most of those offences are minor and insignificant when it comes to checking the suitability of the individual; but they are still declaring something that they may have not told partners, children or even their employers.

My experience of working with volunteers who have previous convictions – albeit for petty theft and benefit fraud – is that they feel highly ashamed of having this information made available. And this is for the ones who are prepared to undertake a CRB. Others simply decide not to apply, withdraw their application, or most likely simply no longer return calls when they are asked to declare their criminal records.

20,000 unsuitable people being stopped from working with vulnerable individuals is a good thing. But at the same time there has been a significant drop in the number of adults prepared to volunteer to work with young people. This can lead to young people having less structured out-of-school activities and ultimately to them spending more time on the streets where there are none of the safeguards that a youth group has.

It's difficult to see a solution, because I'm certainly not advocating removing the requirement for CRBs as part of the recruitment of youth leaders. But continuing to deny it is a problem is not going to solve the problem of a significant lack of volunteer youth leaders in this country.

And now for a bit of shameless plugging

Natasha Judd — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:49:56 +0100

YouthNet's do-it.org.uk is in the running for the Innovation category of the 2008 New Media Awards, run by New Statesman magazine. It's great to see such an impressive line-up in the nominations – once again, evidence of the real drive to use new media technologies to create positive social change.

Of course, we think do-it.org.uk's pretty special, and judging from the comments we've received so far, it has had an impact on a lot of others as well, making it easy for people throughout the UK to find their perfect volunteering opportunity.

Here's just one of them:

do it.org.uk is a great way of finding volunteering in your own area and helping to find opportunities to help others - its easy, simple, useful and fun to use, there is no better website out there for volunteering xxx
- Christele

If you'd like to leave your own comment of support, you can visit do-it.org.uk's entry on the New Statesman website.

And while I'm on the subject of awards, congratulations must go to the YouthNet Development Team who won Gold in the Fundraising Charity of the Year category of the Professional Fundraising Awards last month. Well done Development!

Raising money from the web

Sam Thomas — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:34:25 +0100

My gut feeling is that really innovative trading schemes for charities are fairly few and far between at the moment – despite the increasingly blurred line between the for-profit and non-profit sectors, which presents huge opportunities (and threats) in this area for charities.

This is YouthNet's take on innovative trading – my colleague James and I gave this presentation at the Professional Fundraising conference at the end of May.

Obviously the slides won't make as much sense as they would accompanied by the scintillating, witty narrative that James and I delivered on the day, but hopefully you'll get the general idea.

Anyone else have any thoughts/comments/other examples of charities trading in innovative ways?

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Are the Emo kids on to something?

Olly Benson — Mon, 2 Jun 2008 10:00:27 +0100

If I’d had nothing better to do on Saturday then I might have wandered down to Marble Arch to see a peculiar sight. Over 100 teenagers, fans of the band My Chemical Romance, turned up to hold a demonstration against the Daily Mail newspaper for what they feel is the unfaith portrayal of them and their “emo” subculture: particularly in relation to a recent suicide by a 13-year-old girl that the paper linked to the band.

Despite some, well, frankly schoolboy errors with the protest (the one day a week daily newspapers don’t work on is a Saturday and Northcliffe House, where the Mail is based, it down a side-street so they had to move the protest over a mile away) I genuinely was excited to see the protest taking place. Because it’s a sign that teenagers are getting restless, and the oft-reported apathy that young people are purported to have, is wearing thin.

I hope the protest galvanises the young people involved, and others, to up the ante when it comes to the fair representation of young people in the media. That 100 young people can generate a good deal of publicity probably comes down to the novelty of it and Saturday being a slow news day; but even if the Mail says it won’t change its stance protesting has made their readers more aware of the issue.

YouthNet and the BYC run the Respect campaign to try and ensure young people can respond to the negative portrayal of themselves in the media. Let’s hope this is a summer of fun…

First thoughts on Google Friend Connect

Natasha Judd — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:45:16 +0100

Once upon a time, about five or six years ago years ago, Google was just my search engine. It allowed me to find things previously hidden on the vast and ever expanding world wide web. Then my friends discovered Googlewhacking – searching for a two word phrase that returned just one search result – and all the amusement that could be gained from entering a first name or a message board username into Googlism.

Over the years, the Google empire has grown, and now Google's a plug-in on my browser, it's the host of my webmail, it stores my documents online and allows multiple people to contribute to a project. It's a calendar, an advertising medium, an analytics package, and – after a recent Google University session – it's the brand name on my mousepad.

But, up until now at least, Google has not been my social network. Then, on Monday, Google announced a new service: Google Friend Connect.

The press release from Google states:

"With Google Friend Connect... any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming - picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more."

Sounds good doesn't it. Sounds like a way to increase word-of-mouth promotion of your site, as members invite friends to join them on your website, as their actions – such as posting comments – are added to their social networking profiles. And there are advantages to users as well: a single log-in for any website which uses the Google FriendConnect service, for example, means no more remembering so many different passwords.

I can see this working on some websites. Google gives an example of a website about guacamole where users can rate recipes and give comments. I wouldn't care if my friends on Facebook knew what I thought about adding chillies to the dip.

However, on other sites, perhaps I'd rather be anonymous. I was thinking about TheSite.org this morning, and about how it's a great way for young people to find the information they need in a totally anonymous environment. Now say, I was to 'join' a website similar to TheSite.org using Friend Connect. When you set up a user profile, Google Friend Connect gives you the option of choosing a nickname to use on that particular website, and to nominate which social networks you'd like to broadcast your activity on. Say, I join the hypothetical website wanting to make a comment about a travel article – something I don't mind my friends knowing about, so I use my real name as a nickname and choose to link my activity on the site to Facebook. Then later I come back to the site and log-in. There's a 'settings' link where I could change my nickname and my social networking options, but I'm not automatically reminded about it. And say, I (being a hypothetical 'I' as well) then make a comment on an article about mental health or drugs – and suddenly this appears on my social networks: and then my friends know, and family members know, and colleagues know, and the whole benefit of the anonymous internet has been lost.

I was a member of MyBlogLog for a couple of weeks last year, before I started feeling uncomfortable about my icon appearing on the blogs I visited. While I thought it was unlikely that other users would want to follow my avatar through the blogosphere, building up a picture of my browsing history, there was always that chance...

When it comes down to it, I guess I'd like to keep my website browsing and my social networking separate. That's a personal choice and it's one that, as Google FriendConnect spreads, more and more of us might have to make. But installing the FriendConnect code on a website in the first place is also a choice, and one that is, despite the obvious marketing advantages it may bring to an organisation, worthy of further contemplation.

If you've got thoughts on any of this, feel free to leave a comment below.

(You don't have to use your real name).