Re: A Social Business

Zach,

Did you see the SOTU? What profound awesomeness. If I've ever heard a call to forget the day-to-day, forget the news cycle, and leave conventional wisdom to its own devices, that was a vivid reminder.

On to social business! So it looks like Grameen Bank (which sounds a lot like Gringots Bank, eh?) had enough capital to convince Danone to enter this otherwise unconventional market. And, as you say, the goal is for Danone to make off profitably from this venture.

I'm a bit less familiar with the conventional social business model (I'll have to read Yunus' book or something), but there are a lot of ways to leverage social networks for good.

Social networks--actually really any network--clearly provide the ability to organize. If you're thinking Saul Alinsky, then think of the site Groupon, which negotiates a lower price for goods if the site can bring in a certain threshold of people (e.g., if Groupon gets 100 people, then dinner costs you $10 instead of $20). The flipside of Groupon is organized blackmail. I can't find a good article on the matter, but it looks like the United Students Against Sweatshops used Facebook groups to boycott Russell Athletic, and eventually changed Russell's factory policies.

Other examples: Joe Green's Causes application on Facebook gets users to join various causes and donate money. The American Red Cross leveraged cell phone networks and made it easy to donate money--all people have to do is text "HAITI" to 90999, and $10 is added to their cell phone bill.

A few words on crowd-sourcing: A tree just fell outside of the coffee shop I'm at, and a slew of people went outside and began taking pictures with their cell phones. It brings to mind the thousands gathered in Oakland after the Steelers won the Super Bowls. Thousands of people were, well, taking pictures. This is another big feature of connectivity. The most valuable iPhone applications involve crowd-sourcing. Trapster allows people to mark speed traps. Trapster, and applications like it, are ever growing systems, allowing people to bestow benefits to others.

Still, there's a lot of dubious benefit to the organizing going on on Facebook. The benefits of Trapster are apparent, but it's a very first-world utility.

So. I can think of a few types of programs which would result in social good, but this is a very open-ended discussion. Here's one. When a person went missing last month, the family's first step was to launch their campaign on Facebook and MySpace. A consulting firm could be launched to run social media campaigns. That's not a self-sustaining business, but it's something.

Does that spur any ideas?

Elliot