Social Network for Non-Profits

I was at the AlwaysOn Media conference in New York last week. It was mostly a caucophanous jumble of people hoping to get funding for the next generation of technology that can insert advertising in yet more places (watch for ads dynamically embedded in video and queued to the spoken text in the clip soon -- it's going to make ads even more ubiquitous than ever). The lesson these whiz kids need to learn is that an ad isn't relevant because it is aligned with the content; it is relevant when it is aligned with a consumer's desire to buy. Only a fraction of one's Web activity is shopping.

But one company I was pleased to learn about is ammado.com. They are a social networking platform specifically for non-profits and the philanthropic community. Their primary focus is to provide a networking tool to organizations with a widely dispersed staff, volunteers, and supporters (e.g. there is a network for Amnesty International). They aren't a network looking to aggregate individuals but rather to facilitate organizations doing.

There seems to be a dozen new social networks every day. "Hi, I'm starting a social network" seemed to be the standard opening line at the cocktail party at this event. But I think that these folks are on to something. They have an impressive roster of organizaitons signed on to date. It's nice to have a social networking environment that is more contextually appropriate for non-profits that the big public sites. On the other hand, there is a limit to how many networks one can maintain.