A chat with Nate Ritter (who is awesome) about Twitter, why the government needs to clean up their data, and Giving Anonymously.

The online fundraising platform, Firstgiving, has an interesting promotion running right now.

If you follow them on Twitter at  www.twitter.com/firstgiving, and tweet them at @firstgiving the URL of your favorite firstgiving campaign, your favorite campaign will be entered in a drawing to win a $250 donation.  The more people who tweet about that campaign, the greater its chances of being chosen for the $250 donation.

Thank you kbaird for the photo!

Cross-posted from the TechSoup Blog:

"Mark your calendars for two free TechSoup Twitter events: TechSoup Talks Twitter: Webinar June 9 and Online Event June 10 .

This is my first year not being at NetSquared in person and I'm trying to figure out the best way to follow (and maybe even engage with) the goings-on from here in North Carolina.

I just started using friend feed and I wonder if their "room" function might be helpful here. http://friendfeed.com/rooms/

I also plan to attend the event in SecondLife tomorrow, although I'm not sure what time is best to visit.

Other suggestions?

Twitter is a great tool for a number of niche tasks. But it only works and makes sense once you have a certain critical mass of followers and friends.

It's good for getting informative updates from people you know and respect.  It's good for asking for quick help or information from your Twitterers.  It's even good for asking for support and online voting help.  So I've got a way for some people to make use of it and learn its ins and outs.

But it's really great for telling people where you are for last-minute meetups and open invitations.  Which makes it useful in a conference setting.

Social media practitioners must understand what not to do in the space, as the grassroots are extraordinarily unforgiving and interconnected. Don't be a weed. To wit, I received a message from a friend on Facebook, and immediately it struck me that he was shooting himself in the social media foot with an uzi. The message which I received was sent to 18 persons whose first name begins with the letter R. One can only assume that this instance of his message recurred many times, hence the uzi. It comes across as spam, however well-targeted it might be. It is a formula for failure.

I thought that some of you might like to know what I did to get the word out about voting for the Your Mapper project. Here are some details, focusing on Twitter.

There is less than half an hour left for folks to submit their projects to the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. On March 17th, voting will begin to decide which 20 projects will go on to the 3rd Annual NetSquared Conference (N2Y3).

We really appreciate everyone's help in getting the word out to a diverse range of audiences. We have received over 100 entries!

Thanks to all of the bloggers and tweeters who have spread the word about the call for submissions. We hope you'll help us tell folks about the community voting process next week:

I have submitted a project called Change Broadcast channels.

It brings advanced technologies and tools from Twitter, Daylife and Flurry together to create communities that would bring social change to the world.