Virtual world philanthropy

(photo from http://spotlight.macfound.org/main/entry/ondrejka_fanton_macarthur_island/) Newspapers are getting hammered. With the possible exceptions of neighborhood and ethnic papers their business model has been unable to keep up with the Internet. This is common knowledge and the quest to find new business models for quality journalism and investigative reporting is of such import that the U.S. Senate has [...]

Second Life Philanthropy and Doonesbury

I suppose you know something has gone totally mainstream when its portrayed in Doonesbury. Sunday, September 9 the strip ran a bit on philanthropy and fundraising in Second Life. (if the strip doesn’t come up on this link, scroll to 9/9/07) I guess its time to look for the next new thing. Tags: philanthropy, virtualworld

Pro Bono Brasil

The “Pro Bono Brasil: From Web 2.0 to City 3.0” conference – today in Second Life – launches a year-long discussion exploring charitable giving in virtual worlds and looks at a new economy that values global collaboration and sharing of knowledge. The event is co-hosted by the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy [...]

Imminent financial collapse? Here? Now? or not?

Check out the run on banks in SecondLife and these posts on whats happening to the virtual economy. Apparently a 2L bank, Ginko Financial, promised accounts with 100% interest. When it couldn’t come through (which, if it had, would have had an interesting inflationary impact), customers…er, avatars, lined up at ATMs to get their money [...]

Virtual (real?) platforms for good

Today’s discussion between Jonathan Fanton (President, The MacArthur Foundation) and Philip Rosedale (CEO, LindenLab) was a breakthrough event. But not because of the technology, nor because it took place in SecondLife, was live-streamed on BlogTv and covered by IM, chat, and bloggers while it was going on. Nor because it gave some teenage resident of [...]

Is it live? Virtual? Blogged?

Coverage of MacArthur Foundation in SecondLife Tags: philanthropy, macarthur, virtualworld

Virtual philanthropy, digital poverty

Martin Varsavsky is an Argentine Spanish entrepreneur. He is an investor and foundation executive. And he has noted that virtual worlds bring with them a new way to be poor. Read his post about “digital poverty” in Stardoll, his thoughts about using his foundation to address the issue, and why he chose not to. Here [...]

Gift economies and virtual worlds

First Monday is a great online journal. This month it has two articles of interest (to me): The first is on alternatives to private philanthropy as a means of support. Examples given include public libraries, the free open source software movement. The second is on the gift economy as it plays out in livejournal communities. [...]

Aligning investments across virtual worlds

What does philanthropy look like in a virtual world? This was a session discussion at NetSquared 2006 and the notes are here. This topic may be picked up for NetSquared 2007 (n2Y2) – now under construction. Why would anyone /philanthropy care about this? Here’s what interests me… First, some definitions. Virtual worlds are online 3D [...]