Loading ...
One year in, the venerable do-good widget reports on its progress.
Launched just a year ago, the ubiquitous Causes Application celebrates its first anniversary with an impressive performance report. The company says they’ve registered 12 million users who are now supporting more than 80,000 non-profit causes worldwide. $2.5 million has been raised for 19,445 different 501(c)(3) charitable organizations. According to Facebook, there are 60,000 or so daily users of the application.
Causes also debuted last month with the launch of MySpace Apps, which already has just over 23,000 daily users.
This is encouraging for a market space that has so many promising companies. Granted, $2.5 million doesn’t amount to much when spread across all of those users and nonprofits. But it’s only been a year, and that’s $2.5 million that may not have found it’s way to these charities if not for Causes and social networks. We’re seeing several new and innovative ways to leverage brand marketing and social media for good. We all agree that traditional methods of online advertising are under-performing (read: failing) on social networks. This is attributable to lack of engagement. In other words, the advertising is shut out from the conversation. People are being social and don’t want to be interrupted. When a cause is part of the conversation, though, brands who support those causes can gain entry.
With the myriad of social and environmental challenges we’re facing, people (consumers) are looking for solutions and ways to contribute. Companies are looking for avenues of engagement. What better way than through the shared support of a worthy cause? The marketer wants engagement; the user wants to make a difference and possibly learn about new products, and the charity needs to raise donations. Win, win, and win. And it’s all made hyper-efficient through social media technologies.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Kristina Allison // May 28, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Nicely put. $2.5 mil is spread a bit thin, but it’s a great start and a valiant effort towards something that seems promising. Way to promote the cause! =)
2 Max Gladwell // May 29, 2008 at 8:48 am
Social network advertising “has to be more entertaining, more interesting, more immersive compared to what we have today,” to be effective, Schmidt said. “I believe there will be some new advertising products, that will work, but I don’t think they are invented yet. We and others are working on social advertising products.”
Read more…
3 Meryn Stol // Jun 1, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Do you know what the most popular causes are, and how much money is raised for each?
Leave a Comment