You may or may not have heard of crowdfunding - a means of raising money for charities, the arts and other 'heart on sleeve' causes that rely on public support to do what they do. Crowdfunding works by seeking relatively small donations from a large number of people, in exchange for a stake in the proceeds and/ or final output of the project they are investing in.

It's a great concept - it shows the ability of social networking tools and community websites to bring together people from all corners of the world, and all manner of different backgrounds, behind a common and worthy cause. 

As a music fan, I love the way I can support up and coming acts and help them achieve their rock n' roll (or hip hop, folk, hair metal) dreams through sites like Sellaband. The band gets a devoted and (literally) bought-in following, they get the funding they need to work towards recording and producing an album, and the "believers" get new music and a warm, fuzzy feeling when their act of choice makes the big time. Perhaps it also eases the collective guilt about illegal free downloading, which makes it harder for new bands to get a record deal in the first place!

So far, so wholesome. Now the success of crowdfunding as a legitimate and (reasonably) successful fundraising tool has drawn attention from more traditional capitalist ventures. Perhaps crowdfunding's move into the mainstream was best demonstrated by this Financial Times article  in which already-established British tech company Trampoline Systems announced their intent to raise £1m through crowdfunding to finance growth.

I can see the logic - times are hard, traditional sources of investment are hard to come by and only resourceful companies will make it through this recession. But the news leaves me at a fork in the road. Part of me wants to applaud Trampoline for being enlightened enough to see the potential of social networking as a valid and valuable business tool. As PR professionals, we spend a lot of our time encouraging organisations to treat social communication with the seriousness it deserves and factor it into their strategic planning. 

I guess I should also be supportive of this new "hard-edged" version of crowdfunding, in the interests of preserving the freedom of the internet - after all, the web was not built on restricting access to anything (legal), and social communities work better when they are not gated communities.

Despite all this, I can't bring myself to like the idea. Raising money to fund the pursuit of money seems against the spirit of it all. To look at it from a financial point of view, it raises concerns about conflicts of interests between shareholders. And with regulators tightening their controls over mainstream investment and lending practices, is there a risk that crowdfunding will become a haven for less scrupulous investors? I think the likelihood of that is as low as the likely return on investment, but the threat is there.

It all seems far removed from putting money behind the next hopeful and seeing if my personal support makes a visible difference. But then Sellaband itself has "strategic partnerships" with several corporate household names, and the believers get a cut of any profits their chosen band makes. So whilst the type of organisation that turns to crowdfunding is starting to change, are the motives behind it so very different?

How many colleagues do you count as friends on Facebook? I’m friends with quite a few of Metrica PR Measurement staffers – at least 15 at last count, including three Directors, one Senior Account Manager and two Managers. So, should I be watching my words when I update my status or post on other walls?

There are plenty of horror stories about employees losing their jobs following “inappropriate” activity on social networking sites, such as being caught using Facebook when supposedly ill or even for calling work “boring” in a status update. A recent survey conducted by Deloitte found that 60% of business executives believe they have the right to know how their employees portray themselves and their organisations on social networking sites. Unsurprisingly, employees disagree, with more than half of workers saying their social networking pages should not be their employer’s concern.

According to the Deloitte survey, one-third of employees don’t consider what their boss or customers might think before they post material online. I myself am one of the 33%, as it never occurs to me to vet what I say before I update my status. However, I do have the benefit of 1) liking my job and therefore being unlikely to complain about it in general, not just on Facebook or Twitter and 2) reserving my status updates for important stories, such as “Ria went to the UK premiere of Star Trek last night”. Yet, if I ever did want to complain about, is it not my right to do so on my personal Facebook page, no matter who I’m friends with?

Of course, if I ever did discuss my company negatively, it’s not just employers or clients who could be affected. If third parties can see “I hate Company X” in status updates, opinions can be affected, potential new business can be compromised and/or reputations can be damaged. For PR professionals, what kind of systems are put into place – is it the remit of the PR team or the HR team to monitor what staff are saying? If, indeed, this should be monitored in the first place?

Today’s Guardian report that the new primary school curriculum will require children to master the use of Twitter and Wikipedia will probably make as much sense to today’s parents as Oregon Trail did when New Zealand primary schools described it to my Mother as educational back in the 1990s. 

However, while I’ve never used the virtual Ox rearing skills I developed when I was seven, the ability to navigate the social media landscape is becoming increasingly important due to the ever growing popularity of virtual communication.

At Metrica, we believe that social media should be integrated with mainstream media – it’s a toy to play with and learn about, not something breakable that should be looked at but not touched.

Where better to foster this integration than in classrooms – learning about social media at school can only enhance its credibility as a communication tool.

On the subject of credibility, teaching children about social media allows them to develop their own trust in sources.  To learn that while the immediacy and scope of Wikipedia may be fabulous, the downfall of user supplied content is less than 100% accuracy.

With trust in the media falling – our own UKPulse survey found that only 42% of UK adults trust national newspapers - surely the ability to investigate and identify credible sources can only be beneficial?

Social media also allows us to learn about events as they happen. Twitter is breaking news stories while events such as next week’s G20 summit provide forums for the public to participate and engage in history as it happens.

Without ignoring the importance of core educational areas, teaching children to harness the power of social media to find, share and create information sounds brilliant. Bring on the social media savvy 10 year olds, as long as in the ‘future’ we can still communicate using more than 140 characters at a time.

The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee recently published a report on harmful content on the internet.  This once again brought a renewed focus on social networking following the earlier publication of the Byron Report this year and the Home Office best practice document on social networking.

The report was written to address the "increasing anxiety among parents about the use of social networking sites". The Committee's inquiry included evidence from industry, other parliamentarians and the third sector concluding with 29 key recommendations. Recommendation 28 is of particular note; stressing the need for greater parent responsibility in protecting children from harm on the Internet and suggesting that parents should have more knowledge of social networking sites.

This is interesting stuff, but what does this mean in regards to social media consumption?

Leading children's charity in this area Childnet International have this week published a new guide for parents on young people and social networking sites suggesting that one of the easiest ways for parents to become more familiar with social networking sites is to set up their own page to see what the attraction and the appeal is, and to look at the information and advice for parents on these sites.

This view was backed up with advice issued in July by the Internet Safety Advocate, at security provider Symantec, with whom Metrica have been working on the Digital Family Safety campaign: "now that summer is in full swing, chances are your kids are spending more time online than usual. Staying informed about what they're doing in cyberspace is the best way to help ensure they don't do anything foolish".

With social networking sites high on the public agenda, and likely to stay there with the September start of the new UK Council for Child Internet safety, it could well be that more parents go online and set up their own profiles.  As the internet increasingly becomes the marketplace to reach people of all ages, companies may find that reaching parents on sites not necessarily associated with that generation will become increasingly possible and profitable.

We all know that Britain is a nation of social networkers, even Ofcom say so. What we all want to know is what impact social networking is having on brands.

There are a few 'classic' examples of different types of social media impacting on brands over recent years. Each company has reacted differently to the new challenges they were faced with, highlighting that there is no single way to manage this. For marketers and the PR industry, there are key lessons to learn, namely that each company managed to maintain their reputation by engaging in conversation with their customers through social media and blogs.

AEG

Influential political bloggers Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes spurred a mainstream media story, breaking in the Mail on Sunday, that John Prescott had received gifts from Philip Anshutz, owner of AEG and the Millennium Dome. The buzz came from bloggers, but became a 'traditional' media story and political controversy through the Dale and Fawkes' links to print journalists. The result was damage to AEG’s chances of securing a super casino licence at the Dome.

Cadbury’s