By Chris Lee

The very nature of social media lends itself to the potential to generate widespread awareness of good causes and instigate mass action. Global events such as Twitter-based charity event Twestival and voluntary online PR network Brightone are examples of such benevolence in the social media arena that have been active for some time.

Another player in the social media charity space is Good Connection, a social network which uses the daily interaction of its members to generate money for charity. The site donates up to 20 per cent of all its advertising revenue to its charity partners, meaning the more people join and use Good Connection, the more money is generated for charity.

Founder Jolyon Edwardes said that Good Connection offers members the kind of experience and features they are used to on a social network, plus new features such as filters that allow members to organise their contacts into ‘social, family or business’.

“The idea is to turn everyday online activity into help for the wider community - offering a way of contributing to society and helping others that flows with our everyday lives,” he told NMK.

Social inspiration

Edwardes had multiple sources of inspiration for founding Good Connection. As well as having a father in medicine and having written an MBA thesis based on Einstein’s views around the true nature of human connectedness, Edwardes was also driven by a sense of corporate social responsibility.

“Capitalism has ‘won the war’ in terms of economic models, but it is still plagued by issues as we've recently seen and needs tempering - but this tempering needs to be ‘hard-wired’ into new business models that do more than just make profit,” he argued. “In addition, the world struggles with social issues it cannot afford.  Good Connection is part of a movement of social enterprise designed to address these areas and create solutions for real world problems, solutions that flow with our everyday lives.”

Making social networks work

Social networks are notorious for their lack of durability. While Facebook may have accrued nearly 670 million account holders and is enjoying healthy growth, the likes of Friends Reunited, Bebo and MySpace have seen their traffic hit recently. So what does it take to make a social network work over the long-term?

“The most obvious thing is ease of use. No one will want to use a site that isn’t intuitive – and they certainly won’t recommend it to their friends, family or colleagues, which absolutely has to happen for it to grow and survive,” Edwardes said. “A social network needs to be a no-brainer – if you have to think about using it then it’s never going to stick. It also has to offer something new – and something genuinely useful, to give people a reason to pay any attention to it over and above the glut of other sites vying for users’ loyalties.”

Edwardes said that Good Connection wanted to address some of the most pressing concerns with existing networks, such as privacy issues.

“One of the main things you hear about social networking is that it’s fairly vacuous; lots of us navel-gazing, sitting in front of computers, always on our phones – even in actual company – rather than getting out there in the world. We thought there must be a way of harnessing all that time and energy and putting it to good use,” he said.

“Finally, many networks to date have failed to develop clear and strong brands that actually stand for something or truly differentiate them,” Edwardes concluded. “Business history shows clearly that brands that have meaning and clear definition, and that are differentiated through this, tend to succeed and sustain.”