In 2008 I converted part of my research on social networks and social networking online into material to be embedded within a marketing book.
I wasn’t the first (e.g. Google’s CEO said that the impact on printed news would be an increased demand of quality content), and will certainly not be the last to extol the potential virtues of user-generated news.
But there is another side-effect: the potential for spontaneous and instant feed-back on specific issues.
Beyond Microfinancing
If you pick up any newspaper or magazine covering economic issues, every month you will find articles about microfinancing.
The idea of microfinancing expand globalization benefits available to developing countries, by changing the way funding is accessible.
Figures do not lie. And the picture that is projected, despite the 2006 Nobel peace prize to the Grameen Bank founder, is closer to the old way of managing financial relationships with developing countries, creating what was described already in 1990 in a Museum in Germany as the “spiral of debt”.
The idea? Merging microfinancing and charity to deliver self-sustaining development.
(2000 words)