To coincide with my first year at the helm of Social Edge, I hired Mission Minded, a San Francisco based research firm, to conduct a survey and better understand our audience –you.

Back in September, some of you received a survey to help us understand how the Social Edge community felt the site served them: purely as inspiration or as a robust source of practical information? As community-builder or as a possible source of funding? We also wondered what changes Social Edge could reasonably make that would better serve our audience.

The results recently came in, and I am eager to share them with you –whether you already participated in the survey or would like to take this opportunity to share your opinion.

When I joined Social Edge, I thought that our online platform should become “the practical global network for social entrepreneurs.” I am proud to report that these goals, in large part, have been achieved.

• Our audience is definitely global, with only 47% of active users coming from North America (we are physically located in California but global in scope). Approximately 22% log in from Asia, 16% from Africa and 7% from Europe. You are global citizens, and we all gather on Social Edge!

• Most of you are leading (35%) and emerging (14%) social entrepreneurs. An additional 13% are staff members of social benefit enterprises, for a total of 62%. The remaining are consultants (11%), academic and students (8%), and 3% come from the funding community. There is no doubt that Social Edge is the online platform for social entrepreneurs and professionals in the field.

• You seek inspiration as well as practical “how-to” tools. Overall, you tend to prefer content from experts above content from fellow members. This is why I established from the beginning of my tenure at Social Edge a strong top-down editorial voice for the site, bringing in experts as the primary source of content.

• But Social Edge is also an online community. Member-to-member communication and interactivity are important to you. Mission Minded discovered that Social Edge users were more active than the average online community based on usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s findings: “In most online communities, 90% of members are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of members contribute a little and 1% of members account for almost all the action.” On Social Edge, 34% forward content and links to others, and 17% post comments!

Questions for the Social Edge community:

• Do you agree with these findings?

• Did we miss any important point?

• As we are about to relaunch on a new platform, what you would like to see on Social Edge 2.0?

Victor - Jan 10, 2007 10:55 am (#2 Total: 13)


I am often asked whether Social Edge is a portal or an online community. My answer: both! We are a hybrid between a portal with mostly static content (like most traditional media with an online presence) and a typical online community with mostly user-generated content (like YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr). In fact, Social Edge is an interactive portal.

Patrick O'Heffernan - Jan 10, 2007 10:58 am (#3 Total: 13)


These data will help all of us who publish events on the site fine tune it for our audience, especially as you launch the new platform and the podcasts. Well done!

Victor - Jan 10, 2007 12:18 pm (#4 Total: 13)


Oui! Patrick is currently interviewing Peace Corps returned volunteers who have become social entrepreneurs. I just listend to the first one, Molly Melcher, Director of Tostan in Dakar, Senegal. Wonderful!

As we relaunch Social Edge, we will post this great series of podcasts. Stay tuned!

Benjamin Litalien - Jan 11, 2007 5:31 am (#5 Total: 13)
President & CEO, Social Franchise Ventures, LLC


Victor, congrats on running one of the most robust blogs on the web! As I review the threads there are many nuggets of value to be gleaned and I wonder if there is a way to simplfy the process. For example, when a session has been completed it might be good to have the author/sponsor provide a recap, highlight learnings and generally summarize the responses. As others research past sessions it would provide a quick guide to the content without the need to review every response.

Also, as an organization it would be interesting if you were able to pick some of the most intriguing information that is posted and share that with the broader audience or even the social enterprise community at large.

I don't think there is a more thorough, diverse and insightful collection of inputs for social entreprenuers than you've amassed on the SocialEdge!

Victor - Jan 11, 2007 9:46 am (#6 Total: 13)


Benjamin is right --we should be able to find a better way to share information relevant to social entrepreneurs. One of the new features we will introduce on Social Edge 2.0 (as we call it internally) is the Edge Wiki. A wiki? Yes, as in Wikipedia. It will be the first open source online encyclopedia about social entrepreneurship. Registered Social Edge members will be able to edit the entries and even create new ones.

tutormentor - Jan 11, 2007 1:12 pm (#7 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


It's coincidence that the book Spider and the Starfish has just been released at the same time as you are upgrading Social Edge. I've just finished reading the book and am inspired about the role of catalysts (many on Social Edge) and the potential sites like this have to create distributed ownership of important issues.

However, I don't think this will happen as rapidly as it could be if the mix of donors/foundations remains at 3% of the total.

In a recent discussion at http://www.gifthub.org/giving_as_field_of_practice/index.html Phil and friends talked about "getting the right people together". I think this is something that should also be part of the Social Edge vision.

We can share great ideas and learn from each other, but unless we're introducing each other to the resources we need to put great ideas to work in more places, we're not capaitalizing on the potential of Social Edge as a catalyst for change.

I don't think this is just the responsibility of Victor and the Skoll Foundation. In a Starfish network, this responsibility is shared.

At the end of next year what would it take to have the mix of donors/investors be 25-30%?

tutormentor - Jan 12, 2007 2:24 pm (#8 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

I created a web page to show a chart that I created about 10 years ago, showing how leaders, catalysts, etc. can draw the people they know into volunteer-based t utor/mentor programs throughout a geographic area, and how such people can create on-line forums like Social Edge to share ideas, collaborate, etc.  The link is http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Presentations/Leaders/pictures_history.htm

This illustrates a role I feel the sponsors of forums like Social Edge can talk.  When I was asked why they should take this role, I said, "To whom much is given, much is expected."  Forums like Social Edge, Omidyar, and the Ohrah Winfrey Angel Network attract thousands of visitors because of the celebrity/influence of the host.

Thus, those who have been blessed to have such a position in life, have the responsibility of connecting all of the right people with each other so that more good can come from the networking that is done.

Victor - Jan 12, 2007 8:24 pm (#9 Total: 13)


Social Edge currently attracts over 20,000 unique visitors per month (compared with 7,500 a year ago). How realistic is it to try to attract 6,000 from the donor community? Are there that many program officers in the first place?

Our mission is to give social entrepreneurs tools to be more effective in their work, which in turn should help them attract the right kind of resources.

tutormentor - Jan 14, 2007 9:24 am (#10 Total: 13)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


If we think of a donor/investor as more than a program officer at a foundation, then there are man more than 6,000 of these people in the world. IF Social Edge is to remain THE leader in drawing social enterpreneurs together, and in helping them be more effective in their work, it would be important to try to grow the percent total of investors.

Otherwise, someone else will fill this role and many of those who spend time here will choose to spend that time elsewhere.

Victor - Jan 16, 2007 4:38 pm (#11 Total: 13)


Benjamin writes that there may not be a source with "a more thorough, diverse and insightful collection of inputs for social entrepreneurs" on the Internet. Thank you.

Ironically, that's also the challenge we are facing as we are designing the new Social Edge --how do we make sense of so much material?

One of the key features will be a Resources Wiki --a content database that can be searched, that willbe easy to read and, for those who dare, easy to edit!

ClaraJ - Jan 17, 2007 1:49 pm (#12 Total: 13)
Founder: Be Good, Give Goooood (tm?), Promote Good


LOVE the wikipedia feature! I just wrote a blog to hipbone and wanted to reference other blogger's "words" so I kept putting them in (). This is watercourse way operating, exactly what Charles was talking about. Great job!

As for donor/investor mix, I tend to agree with tutormentor... isn't it true that only 15-20% of funding come from foundations - thus program officers - and >70% come from individual donors? It'd be great to have social edge attract them... there's a lot of them out there. When I introduced myself as a donor to a npo - their first reaction was "great! less paperwork!" I think there's a lot of potential there...

p.s. however pls don't inundate me with grant proposals... there's only so much I can do....

p.p.s. would love to see a global translator on social edge as a utility. if we are global...shouldn't we converse in global languages? n'est-ce pas? guruchi... aigoo.. per favore... hasta luego!

Clara

Victor - Jan 18, 2007 7:20 pm (#13 Total: 13)


Bien sûr, Carla, c'est une très bonne idée. Es realmente una idea muy buena .

But the technology is not there yet. Online translation services can produce a good first draft, but not a decent translation --certainly not good enough for Social Edge.

As an example, I tried to translate a French sentence (Les logiciels de traduction ne sont pas encore au point) and this is what I got in return: "The software of translation is not yet at the point." Not good enough.

We would love to launch Social Edge in other languages. Maybe Social Edge 3.0?