A Facebook Founder Begins a Social Network Focused on Charities

In the New York Times article "A Facebook Founder Begins a Social Network Focused on Charities" by Jenna Wortham talks about Chris Hughes who is one of the founders of Facebook and the chief digital organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Hughes will use his skills to a new undertaking called Jumo, which aims to connect people with nonprofits and charitable organizations. This site will be reviled on Tuesday. Jumo is itself a nonprofit, and will rely on payments from users and sponsorships from organizations that want better promotion on the Web site.

There will be individual charities, projects like building a school in rural Africa and broad issues like gay rights will all have dedicated pages on Jumo. “Relevant news articles, Twitter posts and YouTube videos will be added to the pages, and users can add their own feedback and comments. Users can also find their Facebook friends and follow their adopted projects and issues on the site,” says Wortham.

Mr. Hughes said Jumo would not be primarily about asking for donations. Instead, he said, the site would first try to deepen ties between its users and their favorite causes. “ ‘The more connected that individual is to an issue they care about, the higher probability there is they will stay involved over a longer period of time,’ ” Mr. Hughes said.

There will be several challenges that Jumo will face. One will be, users sharing their donation details with other users and another is will Jumo have to compete with facebook. There are already so many other social networking sites; will people be interested in this one too?

by Gina Hughes