Sean Parker's "Causes" to Leave MySpace: Does It Matter?
The wildly popular nonprofit fundraising application Causes reportedly emailed users of its MySpace app on Tuesday to tell them that all Causes will be removed from MySpace on Friday morning, in three days. Causes was co-founded by Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, the Comcast-acquired Plaxo and Founding President of Facebook.
MySpace users of Causes were encouraged to post links on their MySpace profiles asking cause supporters to join the cause on Facebook instead. In abandoning MySpace, is Causes abandoning nonprofit groups organizing online with poorer users and people of color? Or are neither MySpace or Causes any big loss for social change organizations?
The Politics of Politics
Amy Sample Ward writes today on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog that she's concerned. "Causes leaving MySpace," she writes, "means that no users there will be able to continue promoting the causes, organizations or sectors that they care about via a process that's already been established, adopted, and networked.
"[The] Causes' About statement says, 'The goal of all this is what we call equal opportunity activism. We're trying to level the playing field by empowering individuals to change the world.' The removal of Causes from MySpace where there are active communities of supporters means 'equal opportunity activism' is defined by only certain communities - we know that social networking platforms have very different demographic user groups."
So Sample Ward argues that Causes is being hypocritical by allowing equal access to tools for social change to be defined only by the more economically powerful demographic groups on Facebook.
Causes told users it was pulling out of MySpace because of a lack of activity, but the MySpace App Gallery says there are almost 190,000 active Causes users right now, making it the third most popular app in the politics and causes category.
Housing rights nonprofit exec Justin Massa concurs with Sample Ward and takes the critique a step further: "Causes' justification sounds an awful lot like what financial institutions and the real estate industry used to say about poor and minority neighborhoods. I'm planning a longer post on this subject early next week, but in the meantime wanted to label this for what it is: social network redlining. " [Our link added for clarity.]
On MySpace
Not everyone thinks that MySpace provides a meaningful opportunity to effect social change, though. In an interview four years ago on the topic of nonprofit promotion on MySpace, Pete Cashmore of social network tracking blog Mashable articulated what's now a widely-held belief. He said he believed MySpace was really just filled with young, drunken, hyper-sexualized, attention seekers. "You've been there...it seems crazy for organizations to invest time and resources there," he said, "but it's popular!"
Not everyone sees it that way. The Humane Society, for example, posts daily to MySpace about animal welfare issues for its 65k+ friends.
Causes co-founder Sean Parker poses sitting with crossed legs in his photo on the company profile page; his mission statement begins with the words "According to the historical Buddha..." It's hard to imagine a beneficent religious figure that would ditch MySpace for Facebook, isn't it? Perhaps "the historical Buddha" would choose to pull up stakes from the 11th most popular website in the world if the people were too shallow and go to the hip social network where the money-raising action is.
The Loss of Causes
Perhaps even more cynical are some of the attitudes around Causes itself. This Spring the Washington Post reported that despite big expectations from many nonprofit organizations, posting a Causes app to a Facebook profile and waiting for the money to roll in is a sure path to disappointment.
"Only a tiny fraction of the 179,000 nonprofits that have turned to Causes as an inexpensive and green way to seek donations have brought in even $1,000, according to data available on the Causes developers' site. The application allows Facebook users to list themselves as supporters of a cause on their profile pages. But fewer than 1 percent of those who have joined a cause have actually donated money through that application."
Widely respected nonprofit technology consultant Beth Kanter says that Causes is like a one-night stand. "Where's the opportunity to cultivate and get to know those joiners and move them up the ladder to donation?" she asks, "Where's the relationship building?"
So by pulling out of MySpace, is Causes abandoning some of the people who need it most? Or is MySpace a bad place to do political organizing anyway? Or, is Causes just not a great way to organize and fundraise?
There's a lot of negative feelings around this news, but maybe that's what happens when the struggling nonprofit technology sector puts too much stock in the dalliances of a big-named Silicon Valley baron like Sean Parker.
Kanter brings a twinkle of optimism to the conversation: "This sounds like a great opportunity for other fundraising applications," she says.
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"is Causes abandoning nonprofit groups organizing online with poorer users and people of color?"
This assumes that most people think of MySpace as a social network where Causes was most likely to be used by minorities (which I agree deserve equal opportunities for activism).
I simply don't think that's a safe assumption to make. Some recent data I saw on age distribution confirms my personal experience that the defining characteristic of MySpace is not racial or economic status, but youth.
My 17 year-old, non-techie brother is on MySpace because his peers are there, while I'm on Facebook and Twitter for mine. We're of the same background in all other respects, but age makes the difference. I'd give the people who run Causes the benefit of the doubt by saying that it's very unlikely that teenagers are going to adequately support MySpace as a platform for activism.
The problem with Causes, at it's core - is users on both platforms tend to see showing their support by adding a cause as the extent of their duty.
Had they made users earn the Cause badge of their choice through donation, it leans on the self-importance within us all to drive more donations. "Look at my badge, I donated".
At least as far as I can tell, there's no sticky mechanism to show if someone has donated to a cause, or simply added it to their page. It's like wearing a pink ribbon while watching the Cancer walk on your couch.
This of course says nothing of the move to drop MySpace, however if they had played to the "attention seekers" a little differently, it might be worth enough money in donations to even consider leaving the platform.
I think that all "Cause" related apllications should be open source and platform independent. Users should not ever be forced to be a member of a certain social network to give to a "Cause" related application.
Should we not ask why a "Cause" application only works with one social network ?
Should a "Cause" application be used to give any company a perceived competivie advantage ?
In a way is not this a way to have a "Cause" related application become an exclusive of "Facebook" ?
.....oh by the way....Facebook is a closd silo of data that extracts millions from the content of its member community....Facebook does not share any revenue that it generates from members with the members that helped to generate revenue....I do not think that Facebook would allow anyone to use "their" content without receiving revenue in return....
Can anyone please ask Mr. Zuke why it is right, fair, ethical to generate millions in revenue without shareing the reveue with members whos content has lead directly to the revenue generated ? How is this right, fair, or ethical ?
I find it annoying when people send me a cause request. I doesn't bother me at all when it's posted on their own page but I'd prefer not receiving them at all.
I very much concur with the call for an open source independent platform or protocol for the social benefit sector... and have been trying to articulate just such a model.
Presently the "causes" approach, and the plethora of other sites and tools tend to divide effort, attention and constituencies. We can do better by embracing what is best at the core of Internet design.
This is a good balanced, non-sensationalist post that reminds me why I read ReadWriteWeb instead of some of the other tech blogs that have turned into more of tech tabloids lately.
It seems silly that Causes would simply pull itself from Myspace but I imagine they have a huge demand for customer support. On the other hand, Sean Parker's intimate relationship with Facebook calls for reasonable questioning of his motives, no?
Great post Marshall - just posted a summary and some additional questions/thoughts.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/11/causes-ditches-myspace-dont-put-all-your-fundraising-relationship-eggs-in-one-third-party-proprietar.html
it is a beautiful site.i will visit again. Thanks
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The wildly popular nonprofit fundraising application Causes reportedly emailed users of its MySpace app on Tuesday to tell them that all Causes will be removed from MySpace on Friday morning, in three days. Causes was co-founded by Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, the Comcast-acquired Plaxo and Founding President of Facebook.