Cause Marketing

Cause-Related Marketing in the Newest Social Media In the last quarter three charity/social networking mashups have crossed my desk, each with their own distinctive tang. All three are in beta, that is, they’re works in progress. All are for-profit endeavors. All could benefit from a little ‘network effect’ love. The network effect aka Metcalf’s Law postulates that the value of a network is proportionate to the square of the number of users. That is, a network only starts demonstrating value after reaching the critical mass described by the equation. In other words, each of these outfits has some selling to do. uPlej . With an approach that could probably only come from Utah is uPlej , which owes its business model as much to multi-level marketing as it does to Facebook. Here’s how it works: you sign up as a member of uPlej and designate a charity, create your own profile, alert your personal network to your new uPlej page and UPlej dings your credit card for $4.99 a month. Of that, $...