Facebook Events and Applications: Raising Money and Awareness for a Cause
Facebook Events
Facebook's built-in Events application enables you to specify an event, time, location, and the guest list as desired. Although Events are typically used for small- or medium-sized social gatherings, Facebook Events have been used to organize very large scale gatherings and even national protests. On February 4, 2008, Facebook Events helped organize one of the largest protests in Colombian history. A collective 4.8 million Colombians protested against the kidnappings and other violent actions taken by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a militant Marxist guerilla group who are considered to be terrorists by the United States, European Union, and the Colombian government. The Facebook Event that led to the protests was started by a single Colombian engineer and Facebook user, Oscar Morales. "I thought it was going to be something unimportant, but little by little it became a big mobilization, ...Thanks to Facebook, we have created an exponential effect." (Read more about the protests.) Facebook Events that aim to target as many users as possible, even those who are not directly friends of the creator, can take advantage of the social network's notion of a friend network. Users can invite all of their immediate friends to join an "open event," one where "anyone can join and invite others to join." As such, events that hold popular appeal and interest - like the protests in Colombia - can spread rapidly from friend to friend.
An example of an "open event," which any Facebook user can join.
Greenbook
Facebook's capacity for mass publicity can be used for purposes other than attracting users to participate in an event; sometimes users attempt to publicize a cause as a means of raising awareness and/or money.
Greenbook is a canonical example of a cause-promoting application. Greenbook aims to fight the negative effects of global warming. It markets itself as follows: "Spending time on Facebook uses energy, which puts CO2 in the air. Greenbook reduces the CO2 in the air by investing in green programs and buying Renewable Energy Credits... so now, you can do your part for the planet, in one more way!" Adding the application places a promotional box on the user's profile, which advertises the application to all other users that visit the profile. In doing so, Greenbook promotes itself and raises awareness about the negative effects of global warming.
While raising awareness is a noble goal in and of itself, many such cause-promoting Facebook applications attempt to raise money for the cause they promote. Greenbook accomplishes this through sponsorship; many companies, including TerraPass, The Experience Project, and Teecrush, are willing to donate money to Greenbook for the purpose of purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). Greenbook also raises some of its money through advertisements, which it places on Greenbook-specific pages.
The Obama Application
Some applications take advantage of user information to more specifically target their message. Facebook Applications have the ability to view information about users with the application, as well as some information about friends of these users. The Obama Application, which supports Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, took advantage of this feature to target users in states with critical elections. In May 2007, users with the Obama Application were encouraged to "Reach Out to [Their] Friends" in states with early primaries, asking them to support Obama during this critical period. The application even created pre-written pro-Obama messages that could be sent out to all such friends with one click.
Facebook's ability to spread messages with varying and customizable degrees of breadth clearly makes it a powerful means of mass communication. However, this power of publicity has created a number of concerns and ethical dilemmas surrounding what can and cannot be spread to the masses via Facebook. Read more about content regulation on Facebook.
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