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the globe. Facebook also served as a model for a number of other social networks.
Indeed, the social network space is becoming very crowded, and probably not all
of the new social networks will last for very long.
Getting venture funding is often difficult for true startups forging unique or
novel businesses. But once the initial startup company has proven to be successful,
venture money flows into the next dozen or so startups in the same sector.
The appeal of social networks will probably lead to interesting theses and dis-
sertations by psychology students. It is not immediately apparent why people en-
joy them so much that they can spend hours each day involved with social net-
works as opposed to interacting with living people.
Freelanthropy
Freelanthropy is also a niche company, and the niche appears to be one with
some value to charitable organizations and nonprofit companies. This company
was founded in 2004 in La Canada Flintridge, California, by Dan Sheehy. There
were some corporate changes, and the company was formally organized as Freel-
anthropy LLC in 2006.
The business model is unusual and interesting. With Yahoo and other browsers,
Freelanthropy builds custom toolbars that are stated to improve client interactions
and generate revenues. There is also a search portal using Yahoo Search and Ask.
About 1.3 million nonprofits are supported.
The toolbars provide a “shop and give” option in which some funds go for
product or service purchases and some go to a charity or nonprofit. These funds
are divided 50/50 between the charity itself and Freelanthropy.
The Freelanthropy tools use the pay-per-click model, which is yet another
unique form of doing business that has only come into existence based on the
World Wide Web. When a potential customer clicks on a specific ad in order to
move to its website, the advertiser pays a small fee to the hosting website. Unpop-
ular ads have little or no costs. The most popular ads pay the most, so the pay-
per-click model is proportional to the popularity of the sites. The model can have
either fixed or variable costs based on bids. The actual methods are outside the
scope of this topic.
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