Donate your Facebook status

You might have noticed that 'no-cost marketing' is a bit of a theme of mine right now. And I've written about Facebook 'status' lines before, too. So it won't surprise you how much I love this: Donate Your Facebook Status.

For those who don't use the Facebook social networking site, the 'status' line appears beneath a user's name, and allows his contacts to read a readily updatable sentence on his or her state of mind, concerns or similar.

I change mine every few days. Some people don't set one at all: others change it more than once a day.

But this evening I clicked to a friend's page to see that his status displayed a message about a current affairs issue close to his heart. Underneath was a link inviting me to 'Donate my status' to the same cause.

I clicked to go and check it out.

Someone has written a little plugin application which enables users to put their Status line at the disposal of the organisers of the cause in question, allowing them to display their choice of message on the 'Status' line of every Facebook user who gives them permission. Apparently it was used first during the 2008 US Election campaign.

Now Facebook Status lines are good media. they get read, and they are by their nature linked inextricably to the person (usually one of your friends or associates), who is displaying them.

It's clever marketing.

The Facebook user gets to show his or her allegiance to whatever the cause might be, and the cause get thousands, or even millions of pairs of eyeballs.

Net cost? Zero.

Comments

[Laurence Blume]

Mark,
I still can't quite get to the bottom of this, and would welcome an explanation from any Facebook guru who really knows how it works. I've read things that say 'Set up an event then ask your friends to copy and paste a bit of type into their status', yet seen other examples where you join an FB group, hit a button on the group page that says 'Donate Status' and, thereafter, the operators of the group play a dynamic Status feed into your status throughout the day. So my guess is that this is done using custom Facebook apps written for purpose. But if someone knows better, please enlighten us!

[Mark Treiber]

How do I do this though? You didn't link to the application.

[James]

Sounds like a great idea - where can I find this app you mentioned?