Power of Facebook

Over the past month or so I have been working hard on building up my Facebook profile and doing some of my own research into the business reasons why companies should sit up and take notice of it. It has been fun to see some old friends on FaceBook and to try out some applications. One area that I have been keen to explore is the Groups side of the application and so far I have joined Social Media Club, Fiestas of Intercambio / International Exchanges Parties in Madrid and Social Tools.

Welsh Rugby Legend
A couple of days back I came across, and joined, a group whose sole objective was to get a song - Yma o Hyd - by a Welsh folk singer (and president of Wales' Plaid Cymru party) to the top positions of iTunes. If you're not Welsh, maybe I should explain. Last week Ray Gravell, who played for probably the finest ever Welsh rugby team, died. He was only 56 and was well-known (and loved) in Wales. So popular was he that his funeral will be held at Stradey Park, where he played for Llanelli and it is expected the ground will be packed to the rafters.

This particular FaceBook group has already got 1,313 members and it seems that their objective is starting to take shape. When I last checked the 79p single, Yma o Hyd, was already number 4 in the Folk charts and I would like to think that it will enter the main charts shortly.

Poppy Appeal
This morning whilst on the Poppy Appeal website (don't forget 11th November at 11 am), I started to explore how the British Legion was using the Internet and mobile devices to generate funds for veterans and was quite surprised. Aside from the Poppy wallpaper you could download for your mobile, and Poppy email signature, there was also some information on a virtual cenotaph in Second Life - it looked pretty cool, actually!

The British Legion have also come up with a Facebook Application which allows users to send Poppies to friends - their objectives on Facebook is the following:

Social networking websites such as Facebook present us with an invaluable opportunity to reach a whole new generation of supporters. We hope that Facebook users can send to and receive poppies from all of their friends in the next fortnight and help us reach our target of 1,011,011 poppies distributed by 11am on 11 November when the nation pauses for the Two Minute Silence.

So far 54,918 Poppies shave been sent and their target does look like quite a tall order at this point in the proceedings. But again it's great that such an established institution has recognised the power of social network sites to get the word (and money) out there. 

Update
Dafydd Iwan got to number 1 on the UK Folk charts but only made it to number 50 (I believe) on the main charts. Not bad, though!

The poppy appeal seems to have failed quite miserably in terms of their original objective but I don't know if this was due to the fact that the technology didn't work as well as it should have first off.