Verizon blocks text messages from NARAL

An article in today's New York Times discusses Verizon's decision not to transmit messages to their cell phone customers who have signed up for action alerts from NARAL Pro-Choice America. The article expands to cover the broader issue of "net neutrality" wherein carriers of internet content, and presumably SMS messages, can (or can't) make decisions about which messages or content to carry.

Verizon says it makes decisions based on issues, not on specific content.

“Our internal policy is in fact neutral on the position,” said the spokesman, Jeffrey Nelson. “It is the topic itself” — abortion — “that has been on our list.”

Of course, since Right to Life groups aren't using text messaging at the moment, that's an unproven point.

We can't help but wonder how letting a carrier make a choice about the content it carries compares to letting a woman make a choice about the baby she's carrying. We agree that everyone benefits from a healthy discussion about a controversial issue. We wish Verizon and other carriers would agree to carry any message between organizations and the cell phone users who have opted in to receive messages from those organizations. We're just not sure that requiring Verizon to, shall we say, carry the message to term, is consistent with a pro-choice position.

What do you think? About text messaging, that is.

Forget Visa? Do you take "Revolution Money"?

No, it's not a credit card for anarchists (what an oxymoron!). "Revolution Money" is a new online banking and credit card system founded by former AOL, MasterCard and government bigwigs that hopes to upset MasterCard and Visa.

Steve Case, founder of AOL, has partnered with Ted Leonsis (Washington Capitals hockey team owner and former AOL Vice Chair), former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers; former Charles Schwab CEO David Pottruck; and former MasterCard international president Russell Hogg. According to the Washington Post article, they plan to drastically undercut the percentage of each transaction that MasterCard and Visa take (the article said 0.5% instead of 1.9%). There's a more meaty article at TechJournal South.

So, does it make sense to become a Revolution Money merchant? One the one hand, they say they hope to have 100,000 cardholders in the next few months, but grow to over one million in a year. That's not much of a dent in the credit card market. On the other hand, Ted Leonsis helped form Network for Good back in the day, so we bet he'll make some rapid inroads into the donation processing market.

Just the name "Revolution Money" will appeal to the younger, online crowd (not that they've replaced their grandparents on the top of the donation pyramid yet, but they will someday).

So, check it out. While we're at it, let's get your opinion: Does PayPal make a difference in your donation processing? We've tested it with one client and seen that it makes a marginal increase in donations. What about you? Please comment.

Web users have varied interests in online news

One of the best ways to create a surge in web traffic is to get some great press coverage. How big? One of our clients captured 50% of its 2006 online donations in June -- most of that within 24 hours after its spokesperson appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper for an hour. We're talking over $350,000.

Some good news has just been published by Pew's Center for Excellence in Journalism. They compared the top news stories offered by "mainstream" news outlets to the most popular stories in user-driven news sites, like Reddit, Digg, Deli.cio.us, and Yahoo! They found very little overlap.

In addition, they found that the top stories on user-driven sites tended to be much more varied and much more transient. This means that nonprofits have a greater opportunity to get their stories "published" in these user-driven sites. But, the decision to make these stories popular does not lie with editors. Instead, users drive the rankings. In other words, your communications department can stop schmoozing the editors, and instead publish press releases that are hip, relevant, unique and easy to read.

Whether this is good news or bad news for your nonprofit depends on which of those skills your communications department practices.

Read the report highlights here.

Purging email data?

According to their website, "Blue Sky Factory is a leading provider of products and services designed for online marketing communications." As an online marketer, I subscribe to their newsletter to keep up with the industry. Apparently I was not active enough so I've been unsubscribed. Here is the email they sent me:


Hello from Blue Sky Factory!
We noticed that you've never clicked on a copy of our Factory Direct monthly e-newsletter.

Was it something we said?

In order to respect your privacy, we have now removed you from our Factory Direct mailing list. If you would like to continue to receive your copy of Factory Direct, chock full of industry news, email marketing tips and so much more, please click here to re-subscribe.

Otherwise, we are certainly sad to see you go! If you have any comments or suggestions you'd like to share with us, please email us.

Sincerely,
Team Blue Sky Factory

Last time I checked it just doesn't cost that much to store an email address. But, email marketing is their business... So now I wonder what the goal of this act is? To clean up data? To reengage those really interested?

Is this a good practice? What do you think?

Fred08 - great site, too bad it doesn't work

I expected more from the Fred Thompson campaign than the others. This guy, who recorded a great YouTube rebuttal to Michael Moore, seemed like the "hippest dude" among the Republican candidates (I know that's not saying much...).

So I went to his new site tonite, after the big announcement, and was surprised and thrilled to see the home page taken up by a bold request to "join" and asking for first and last name, email address and zip. I signed up, and then was directed to a page requiring a street address and a password. It also invited me to enter my cell phone and IM information, but hey, we're not that committed to the campaign.

So imagine my frustration when I got this error message:

Your friend account was not created. Please try again.

So I did try again. And again. and again. Same message. What was I doing wrong? Often it's a password problem (too short, needs a number or alpha character) but here, no explanation. Nada. Insert another quarter and try again.

I even tried it in MSIE instead of my native FireFox, thinking maybe they weren't that hip after all. No dice there either.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!