My main interest now is in the transformative potential of the emerging person-centered social media.

I read mostly blogs... starting from just a selected few... and following the links from there:

• dana boyd (apophenia)
• Marc Andreessen
• Michael Parekh (on IT)
• Charlene Li (Forrester)
• Brad Feld (Thoughts)
• Simeon Simeonov
• John Battelle (Searchblog)
• Jon Udell
• Mashable
• Meg Hourihan (Megnut)
• Read/WriteWeb
• Jason Calacanis

I must be a considerate idealist... according to this personal DNA test... :)

You are a tourist on a city street... trying to find your way. How do you get help?

Help Yourself

You use a map or a booklet with information about the city. That's ok... although... feels a bit like work... and is somewhat lonely.

People Helping People

You ask a passer-by for directions... Or simply, a passer-by recognizes your "tourist" behavior, stops on his/her own will and spends 30 seconds (often much more) helping you. You feel good. The passer-by feels even better. Witnessing onlookers feel good too. What happens is an easy, almost instinctive "give and take"... so natural that we don't even think about who "gives", who "takes", or why is this happening. This is not "giving"... people are just helping each other.

So... what is Aidpage?

Aidpage is a free public space on the Web where you can:

• speak out about your problems and needs,
• act upon your need to help others,
• join or organize groups for good causes.

Aidpage fosters informal communication among Aidmates, sharing of experience, and mutual support. Simply posting on Aidpage makes you an Aidmate.

E-Bay enables the simple, direct "people buying from people" over the Internet.

Aidpage enables the simple, direct "people helping people" over the Internet.

Need to know more?

Here are a few links to the aidpages of veteran Aidmates:

• WHO ~ KNEW
• Soulight
• Elaine of TSA
• Ekikaseven
• Lady Christie

See also:

• Instructions: How to Use Aidpage
• How Does Aidpage Work
• Why Aidpage...

A colleague found a very interesting article - "The Kindness of Strangers" by Robert V. Levine. Here is a snippet:

"Over and again, New Yorkers told us they cared deeply about the needs of strangers, but that the realities of city living prohibited their reaching out. People spoke with nostalgia for the past, when they would routinely pick up hitchhikers or arrange a meal for a hungry stranger. Many expressed frustration—even anger—that life today deprived them of the satisfaction of feeling like good Samaritans."

I just hope that Aidpage will eventually give those unhappy New Yorkers... and the many like them all over the world... the informal and immediate ways to be good Samaritans again. That's my work now... and the work of our team at Aidpage... Ivan, Tzenko, Boby, Valcho, Pencho, and Stamen.

And then... another good... somewhat philosophical article... from The New York Times...  "In Pursuit of Unhappiness" by Darrin M. McMahon. He writes:

"... the philosopher John Stuart Mill, came to a similar conclusion. His words are all the more worth heeding in that Mill himself was a determined proponent of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. 'Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so,' Mill concluded after recovering from a serious bout of depression. Rather than resign himself to gloom, however, Mill vowed instead to look for happiness in another way.

'Those only are happy,' he came to believe, 'who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.' For our own culture, steeped as it is in the relentless pursuit of personal pleasure and endless cheer, that message is worth heeding.

So in these last days of 2005 I say to you, 'Don't have a happy new year!' Have dinner with your family or walk in the park with friends. If you're so inclined, put in some good hours at the office or at your favorite charity, temple or church. Work on your jump shot or your child's model trains. With luck, you'll find happiness by the by. If not, your time won't be wasted. You may even bring a little joy to the world."

And then another article from The New York Times... by Stephanie Strom... originally titled "What Is Charity?"... as of now suspiciously archived under the totally meaningless "Aftermaths." What were the "maths" for changing the title... I wonder. Did it sound a bit too much of a "questioning" for the good taste of some influential charity?

Here are snippets from "What is Charity?"...

"... among the many who had been turning away from Americans most in need of charity was the philanthropic sector itself. Last year, the share of giving going to organizations most directly related to helping the poor hit a record low, accounting for less than 10 percent of the $248 billion donated by Americans and their philanthropic institutions...

Other statistics also suggest that the nonprofit sector has drifted from core notions of charity. Nonprofit hospitals provide no more charity care than taxpaying counterparts do. While university assets soar, tuition continues to outpace inflation. Only a sliver of giving to churches is spent on social services...

So what is charity today if it is not aimed primarily at the have-nots? Has its definition been stretched so broadly that it no longer has meaning? If so, are the tax breaks that propel our philanthropy justified? Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California, the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has raised those questions in a series of hearings examining whether tax exemption is justified for certain types of nonprofits.

The question, in his words, is, 'What is the taxpayer getting in return for the tens of billions of dollars per year in tax subsidy' offered to donors through tax write-offs or to nonprofits through their tax exemptions? According to the Treasury Department, the charitable deduction will amount this year to a $40 billion tax subsidy, mostly to upper-income households - overshadowing the roughly $20 billion the human services sector is likely to raise. No official estimates exist for the cost of the tax exemption covering money that nonprofits spend and for the property they own.

The hearings have received little public notice but have terrified nonprofit leaders, more than a Senate Finance Committee threat to tighten regulation of charities.

'When you start to ask what is the fundamental underlying rationale for tax exemption and the charitable deduction for donors, it leads to questions that are far more difficult to answer than questions about greater disclosure and better governance,' said John D. Colombo, a tax-law professor at the University of Illinois who testified before Rep. Thomas. 'It gets you to questions like, why should an institution with billions in the bank get tax exemption?'"

(more on the "questions about greater disclosure and better governance"...) 

I am tempted to ask my questions though. Does compassion need incentives? If you want to give $10... why would you want a $1 tax break. Why not simply give $9? What's the point of this tax incentivized "giving"...? But I must be too simplistic here... I probably don't know enough about the complex dynamics of the partnership between government and private (some call them "special") interests... bla-bla... bla-bla... whatever...

That's it for today... and may be for this year. Hopefully, I did not break too many laws by doing these extensive quotes.

We created Aidpage so that people come together to help each other. We believe that web enabled "peer-to-peer" micro-helping will meet needs not readily met by government, nonprofits, or business.

Aidpage is a response to two related problems affecting millions of people in the US and globally - (1) erosion of traditional support networks, and (2) institutionalized aid growing increasingly complex, conditional, selective, and competitive.

Erosion of traditional support networks

Today's global markets by all definitions do not exactly "care" about individual livelihoods. People generally accept this as a fact of life, try to prepare accordingly, and do not expect "help" from the markets. People try to develop high levels of competitiveness, autonomy, mobility, and capability to change. This, however, accelerates the disintegration of traditional social environments built on cooperation, mutual dependencies, locality, and predictability - like extended family, neighborhoods, childhood friends, etc.

The erosion of these traditional environments has two aspects - (1) the psychological loss of informal, unconditional "giving and taking", and (2) the practical loss of a historically well established support layer for people "in need."

We design Aidpage as the "people aid people" platform - based on the following principles:

• person-to-person giving is a basic human need
• empathy and compassion need no incentives nor conditions
• everybody always "gives" and "takes"
• immediacy and informality work better than "process"
• people are "wired" for trust.

Institutionalized aid growing increasingly complex, conditional, selective, and competitive

Institutionalized aid (government and nonprofit) in the US is a huge system driven by over a trillion in tax and donation dollars annually. The distribution system is so complicated and vast that it is rather opaque to traditional processes of public scrutiny. Episodic media interest - notably after big disasters - "let's see how the money will be spent" - is only scratching the surface of the problems. Despite recent well intended efforts, nonprofit organizations still largely operate as purely private organizations that do not feel enough pressure or need to be transparent to the public. The knowledge about the bysantine mechanics of the aid system is embodied in fully blown professional occupations like fundraising, program development, grant making, grant administration, grant writing, grant consulting, etc.

Most people turning to government aid are already having trouble coping with competitive markets. They are indeed looking for unconditional assistance. True, there are the big "entitlement" programs like Medicare and Social Security. But also true is that many other vital areas of government support are strictly conditional, competition-based, selective, restrictive, outcome based, and policy driven - such as student aid, medical expenses assistance, small business assistance, housing and home repair assistance, etc. Average Jane and Joe have to "inquire", "apply", "prove", "qualify", "compete", "perform", and "report" - to get the aid that is funded by their own tax money. If only they knew how to do all this.

Nonprofit aid has even more openly discriminatory distribution policies - tolerated on the assumption that the money is "private". But let's see how "private" is it. Annually, the nonprofit sector gets about $250 billion in tax incentivized private donations ($210 billion of them from individuals)... and about $390 billion from government grants and contracts - pure taxpayers' money that is (see data source).

Access to institutionalized aid is acutely problematic for the intended beneficiaries. Naturally, there is an unending public interest in the "who, how, how much, and why" of the distribution processes and outcomes. And there is an unending frustration with the complexity, lack of transparency, selectiveness, and competitiveness of a system whose main purpose is to help people.

Information on these processes is publicly available - residing in thousands of different sources and formats. However, the information is one sided - it is only produced by institutions and naturally reflects "institutional" points of view and bureaucratic "defending of turf." The other main participants and de facto "owners" of the system - the aid beneficiaries - do not have any outlets, formats, or platforms they could use to publicly speak out, discuss, and reflect on these processes. Money wise - the system is a full circle from the public up and then from the institutions down. But information wise - it works one way only... whenever it works... to the extent it works.

We design Aidpage as a bottom up conversational media:

• aggregating large bodies of information offered by participating publishers
• easy self-publishing (blog-like but non-geek)
• audience participation on each page - commenting, adding of links, system-wide communication
• system-wide findability - search, tagging
• public space, mutual visibility, transparency.

See also:

• Why Aidpage? (a more passionate answer from my partner Ivan Ivanov)

A big, big "Thank You" to all aidmates who gave time and care here on Aidpage in 2006!

WHO~KNEW, soulight ... you definitely are THE aidmates of 2006!

And everyone of us - here on Aidpage - is the "Person of the Year" for 2006! They say, in this article in TIME Magazine, that "really a revolution" is happening... enabled by the web:

"It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing."

But we knew that long before hearing it from TIME Magazine, didn't we?

Merry Christmas!

Great choice of TIME Magazine for Person of the Year. Here is the bit from the article we like most:

"It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing..."

Here is more from the article:

"The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year...

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

And we are so ready for it."

Here is the full article...