From the brilliant people who originally created an ad-supported cable channel whose programming consisted of music advertising (in the form of entertainment (read: videos)), MTV last week launched Think.MTV.com, a community site (in beta) for young people to find information about getting involved in good causes. Tricked out with tools to find, mobilize other people with similar interests, and recognize those who take action, the site is in beta. A 2006 study by MTV found that 80 percent of young people want to help their community and take action to support causes, but only 19 percent describe themselves as “very involved.”

One of the better Web 2.0 primers that helps set the stage for the current new frontier of business and marketing, is here at O'Reilly.   This snapshot nicely unites a slew of related concepts that all contribute to today's business climate:

For lots more explanation, and a comparison to the preceding web, read the full article.

Remember the Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerilla marketing fiasco that scared the bejesus out of Boston back in February?

An advertising buddy and I met for cocktails that evening. He had come off a marathon client meeting hashing through the particulars of a national print and TV campaign. On a break, he and his client catch news of the stunt. The meeting winds down. Hanging in the doorway, the client turns to my friend, "Oh, yeah... and give me something viral in all this, will you?"

Puh-lease. Viral is a term that tends to be used naively and recklessly in marketing. It doesn't work at all the same way as, say, buying a print ad.  Be ready for an earful if we get started on this subject in person.

Meantime, for a primer, check out this post from Nielsen Buzzmetrics' Max Kalehoff featuring contributions from Columbia University sociology professor, author and collective dynamics thought-leader Duncan Watts.  Duncan's books and works are fascinating.  Or, learn more straight from Duncan in this short Harvard Business Review article or participate at Small World Project. Connectedness isn't just for Kevin Bacon.

My friend and hairdresser Crissie  set me up with a cut and color last week.  Meantime we exchanged various cultural observations, some inspired by my recent trip to London and Paris.

Travel is always personally expansive. Yet leaving the U.S. to visit western Europe this time was like going to Mars to see the Earth clearly. For me, this trip crystallized things I've been pondering for a while now about American culture: our too-often thoughtless development of open and residential space; a general lack of innovative public transportation adoption; wastefulness; and relentless consumerism.

Case in point: Crissie mentioned a new product she had discovered that seemed emblematic of mindless consumption: charms for CROCS.

Suddenly, Crissie stepped back from me in her chair. Her scissors dropped to her side, and exclaimed, "My God! We're a country at war...and we're decorating our CROCS!"

There's nothing inherently wrong with CROC charms. They must make a lot of little kids really happy. And I'll bet you can collect a whole bunch, too, like the ingenious Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh! or Webkins infinite franchises. (Our only out seems to be waiting until our kids graduate to the next age-appropropriate collectible scheme. I digress.)

Our conversation helped gel this overly simplistic equation. As pedantic as it may seem, we need some framework to help reinvent the long overdue American industrial-consumer complex.

Bottom up, this means helping each other make mindful consumer choices. (Do we really need Croc charms?)

Top down, this means coaching businesses and brands to think beyond primarily advancing their self-serving needs, toward better serving their constituents and, when possible, the greater good too. It's doable. As marketers, few of us have really challenged ourselves to think in this way. What if we did?

Business can bridge gaps -- never more efficiently and easier to do than now, thanks to the Internet. Business can fuel its own growth and simultaneously address social needs. As the old SNL skit goes, business today can be "a floor wax and an ice cream topping!"

It's beginning to happen. GE's introduction of a new credit card last week helps consumers offset greenhouse gas emissions via purchase of carbon offsets with reward points. This program understandably has been met with mixed reviews.

We've got public-private partnerships. Isn't it time to think about public-private-consumer partnerships for positive change?

Last year, Mentos reconfigured marketing plans when this video by two unknowns circled the globe online.  This June they even set a world record of Diet Coke / Mentos geysers.

Perhaps Starbucks has an opportunity to do something similar -- except with social gravitas -- with Sudan and frappucino lovers everywhere, now that this video is making the rounds:

As reported by Cool Hunting:

"From corporate-sponsored "Cool Apps" to niche spin-offs like Bakespace, Virb and I'm In Like With You, online communities are still largely about socializing and/or wasting time. Their potential as powerful tools for the greater good—beyond finding out where the party's at—has been largely untapped."

This post features several sites where social networking meets social change.

Check out this Harvard Business Review interview with Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

The main premise is that if intellectual property owners resist hoarding knowledge and, instead, share it openly, the return will be much greater. Good examples illustrate the four factors that are driving the social web and, ultimately, a business environment of greater openness, collaboration and efficiency. Those factors:

The New Web: Web 1.0 (based on HTML) was a publishing platform. Web 2.0 (based on XML) is a collaboration platform – platform for self-organization

Demographic Revolution: Kids of baby-boomers are bathed in bits… they think and act differently.

Social Revolution: Put these two factors together and the result is a social revolution.

Economic Revolution: These three factors combine to create an unprecedented economic revolution of efficiencies of cost and knowledge transfer.

Old Model: Think globally / act locally.

New model: Think locally / act globally.

The podcast can be found at the HBR podcast page. Listen here (MP3)

Terra Bite Lounge is an upscale voluntary payment cafe/deli in Kirkland, Washington, I discovered by way of Reveries.

At Terra Bite:

• There are no prices on the menu.
• Patrons choose what to pay, and are encouraged to pay what they would elsewhere.
• They "cheerfully serve those who cannot pay, in a non-stigmatizing setting, with no political or religious message."

The real-world experiment stemmed from a debate in a Saigon bar between former Google programmer (now cafe owner) Ervin Peretz and a colleague: Peretz argued that people are inherently good, but can be influenced by their environment. His theory: If people see good, they'll be good.

The Seattle Times characterizes Peretz as "the Robin Hood of the Starbucks set" as the cafe must attract enough paying customers from the high-end economy to cover the cost of those who pay less or nothing.

To at least break even, Peretz estimates he'll need a steady flow of 100 customers per day. As of the Times' article, Terra Bite had served up to 80 customers per day, averaging about $3 per transaction.

Check out this related conversation thread, or place your bets on Terra Bite's future in this poll.

Powered by Qumana

Three cheers for Michael Dell who announced at the Consumer Electronics Show "Plant A Tree for Me," a first-of-its-kind global carbon-neutral initiative that plants trees for customers to offset the carbon impact of electricity required to power their systems.

While Dell’s commitment to environment and energy efficiency -- especially encouraging customer action for positive impact -- is admirable, I can't help but wonder if part of the motivation is to offset the company's mishandling of customer service issues that exploded in the blogosphere last year.

If the headline isn't staggering enough, this report from the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the UN University, also says the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth.

This worldwide inequality study is distinctive from various others in that it: