Non-Line Blogging

Go and see Kiva.com.  The principle is simple - rather than your money swilling around in your bank account making money for big nasty banks maybe it should be put to work helping the less well off.  Kiva offers a matchmaking service for third world entrepreneurs to access funds from a new generation of global investors - people like us.

I thought it was an engaging site with a meaningful purpose.  You browse a nice clean interface looking at people with small businesses in the poorer parts of the world.  There is a summary of what they do, how much money they need and what they will do with the money.  Lots of ways to select partners (good use of meta-data!), and plenty of lovely web 2.0 stuff that shows you who is currently investing in the partner.

Funnily enough, I gave a small amount to a partner without reading the small-print, thinking it was a charity.  But once the scheme is up and running I GET MY MONEY BACK.  So is this a charity or a bank and am I a donor or an investor?  Frankly I don't care.

The digital marketing point here is that there are many ways to view the world, and the business models that make it tick.  Are your customers only customers, or should they be harnessed into some more worthy social cause or business movement?  The social point is that maybe our current account balance should be put to good use funding worthy programmes and changing lives rather than giving big banks even bigger profits.