SixDegrees is a new site that urges users to donate to celebrity charities and then place a widget on their sites promoting those charities. It’s not explained very well, and it appears to be little more than a wrapper for Network for Good, a really excellent charity social network. It’s also, of course, a shot in the dark to revive Kevin Bacon’s flatlined career.
Users are urged to add a celebrity widget to their site which is tied to a donation page for a specific charity or charities. Donations made through the widget are tracked and the total is displayed in the widget. Users can also create their own custom widget, sans the celebrity photo.
Bacon goes into detail in the video below about the Six Degrees of Separation movie and the subsequent game making fun of the fact that he’s appeared in so many films. However, the connection of all that to this service isn’t really explained, although it can be assumed that since we all are so close in the global community, giving to charity is good.
We’ve created a widget to test it out. Donations go the the Red Cross.
Some where right now, Internet Atlas strains and groans and he gives out a little sigh as the weight of yet another blog bling strains our fragile little world.
You should really put it right underneath the CrunchBoard feed. It’s a lot more interesting than MyBlogLog.
The story behind the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....evin_Bacon
It took one Google second to find that info.
haha Alaska ZING!
Damn, I wanted to be the first to try it out, LOL…
Jeremy - yeah, maybe I should explain about the movie and the game, I assumed people knew about it. But I still don’t get the connection to this service.
Just to let you know.. For to be really popular on MyBlogLog you have to include a picture of a hot girl as your avatar. It has to look like it’s a candid picture though, and not just a image sized photochop. Cause then, and only then, would I bother clicking on your stupid name. Seeing a list of fat balding white men and the occasional cartoon character only makes me wish I have an ad filter to block it all out.
Jeremy, he wasn’t saying he doesn’t know about the Kevin Bacon/six degrees thing, just more why that would be the name or raison d’etre for a charity site.
So let me get this straight - I give money to a charity that is sponsored by some celeb. The celeb will get the credit for $x millions in donations even though the majority of the money came from say techcrunch subscribers?
Or am I missing it? If I am right, never see me being a part of it.
In the US I think people would associate six degrees with Kevin Bacon. So they figured to make some sort of social networking effect they might as well be cheeky and call their schtick 6 degrees and hire Kevin Bacon to do a silly youtube. OMG viral!
The next best thing would have been to hire Paris Hilton and ask her to explain how herpes is spread in a youtube and relate that to donations.
What I really don’t understand is– Red Cross? They’re still saving tsunami money ‘for a rainy day’.
I dunno. Tell me something better and I’ll add it.
Can one of you people who is smarter than I (which is most of the world) explain why I should donate money thru a celeb to Red Cross and not either on my own or say as part of an effort with TC, CN, Mash, etc.? I don’t get it except to help the celeb look good.
Orlando Sentinel posted about this too it seems:
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.c.....ns_ne.html
from the article:
Bacon will match the charitable dollars raised by the top six non-celebrity fundraisers with grants of up to $10,000 each.
Gee, as a balding white guy appearing over on the reader roll, I take offense at Alaska’s remarks. However, I agree with him: an attractive young woman’s photo would generate better click throughs. : )
I’m going to start using Kevin Bacon’s picture in mybloglog.
MyBlogLog is for people that snub their nose at Myspace thinking it’s beneath them. Let’s all rejoice at how out of touch with youth we are by badging ourselves accordingly to our social network!
Celebrities never cease to amaze me. So like others have said…donate using this widget thing on behalf of some millionaire celebrity and they can then have some article in People magazine about how they care about helping people??? No thanks!
What REALLY gets me is when they have some HUGE party to honor the fact they helped raise some amount like $1.6 million when everyone in the room could easily write a check for that amount and not even blink an eye. One event I heard about on TV raised this exact amount and guess how much the party cost to “honor” the giving celebrities??? Try over $2 million!!! Maybe skip the party to glorify yourself and give that money to charity too???
I could go on and on and probably do a blog on this very subject.
Michael, donate to refugee in Sudan. this is a good cause.
MyBaldguyBlobLog
in the name of kevin bacon, heal thyself!
If you want to do something really great with your money - and get it back to do something else great with - try http://kiva.com - and you get a widget!
I don’t really like the Red Cross, but I donated anyway. I’m one of the people that usually leave a tip at the hot dog stand, or drop money into the pot next to the guy ringing the bell at Wal-Mart or grocery store. If I had more money, I would definitely donate a lot more.
I’m surprised to see only two people so far… Myself, and someone more generous who gave away $100.
he’s right - it really *is* beautiful once you take him out of it…
Sounds widgetwise like the better and less baffling chipin.com.
Michael,
Give some thought to a charity related Autism. In the U.S., 1 in 166 children are diagnosed which is multiples more than 20 years ago.
Also, check out http://www.charitynavigator.org. They rate charities pretty well. Not perfect but the best I’ve seen.
And by the way, I’m told that Network for Good takes like 4.75% for processing transactions whereas most retailers pay around 2.0%. Don’t see much “good” in that.
good times
Other web-based charity resources http://www.care2.com and http://www.goodtree.com
The former is a social network for cause-related action (charity, volunteering, etc.) the later a search engine that spilts its revenue 50/50 with the charity of your choosing.
Not to be confused with Six Degrees the magazine:
http://sixdegreesmag.com/
Wasn’t there a company called Six Degrees that was like an early Friendster in 98-99?
this is smart - why not, good job somebody
the connection in the services could just probably be the nitch marketing comminality (yea right words) in that very same connection and called for a click click promotion buy who set it up that way
Oh, I was so hoping it was the SixDegrees.com of years past.
Engtech, check the wayback machine!
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://sixdegrees.com
They were one of the first social networks if I recall correctly, but dang, that was 10 years ago.
Kevin Bacon’s flatlined career? I submit Mystic River and The Woodsman as evidence to the contrary.
Michael - Good point. Forgot about those.
@tony: Yup, that’s the one. I remember getting so excited about the idea, and then really disappointed when they sold all of my friend’s email addresses to spammers.
@Michael:
The Woodsman is an amazing flick, if really, really hard to watch at points.
I had no idea he was in Animal House, Friday the 13th, and Planes/Trains/Automobiles.
Pretty cool idea.
Check at this site I found poor family. I decided to help them with $20. The site is http://www.moneyproblems.50megs.com/
Network for Good takes a 3% fee which covers the merchant fees and banking fees for processing such a large amount, and dollars, of donations.
Kim (comment #40 is mistaken). NetworkForGood takes a 4.75% fee !!!!
It’s not easy to find on the site, but if you can find your way to
http://support.networkforgood......&q=279
you will read:
“There is a 4.75% tax-deductible fee for credit card transactions.”
Use http://www.ChangingThePresent, instead. Lower fees and more choice.
The URL for the donation site noted in post 41 above is
http://www.ChangingThePresent.org
The site also lets you choose exactly what you want to accomplish (feed a child, preserve an acre of the rainforest, computers for schools, fund an hour of a cancer researcher’s time, clear an acre of landmines, etc.)