"Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected."

If it wasn't for an email from the global chairman of H+K Strategies, Jack Martin, I would not have thought to read Mark Zuckerberg's letter to accompany Facebook's Form S-1 Registration Statement for its IPO this week. (How many people read these SEC filings and prospectuses anyway?) But there's some great stuff in it that could almost comprise a manifesto for the social web. One idea in particular stands out:

Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness . . . At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

In other words, the social web is about the relationships it can intermediate. Anyone who has heard me speak about the social web will know that understanding this concept is critical to getting any social engagement strategy right, whether for a non-profit or for-profit enterprise. It's why I prefer the term 'social web' to 'social media', the latter implying as it does that social platforms exist for broadcast purposes.

I'm not naive enough to think that the letter's altruism drives every one of Facebook's business decisions. But this sense of a social purpose does peak through in the entrepreneurial spirit of social web inventors.

This is another social network unlikely to escape the marketing onslaught for very long. I imagine creative minds are trying to find ways for their brands to jump in as I write.

I'm talking about Pinterest, of course, the addictive image sharing social network in which people pin cool, bizzare, bland, stupid (to my mind anyway - no more shoes please) or instructive images to 'boards' for others to see, comment on, or trash. The demographics so far skew to 25-34 year olds, the majority (80%) women.

There are personal uses that make a lot of sense, as I found when I asked the question on Twitter a few weeks ago. The responses talked about its value as a wedding planning or interior deisgn tool for example. My boards will be devoted, as expected, to quirky or artsy images.

Such leading brands as Whole Foods have boards (followed by close to 11,000 people already) and Lands End (only 526 followers so far) which have lovely stuff to look at and "pin". In a post at Search Engine Watch, blogger Kaila Strong list seven ways companies could use the Pinterest platform to meet and interact with customers:

1. Hold a contest
2. Conduct market research
3. Feature customers
4. Present concepts in a new way
5. Put a face to your brand
6. Promote your image content
7. Sell more products

All good . . .

For those who work in reputation management, current affairs and the social web, we'll likely be scratching our heads for some time yet about how Pinterest can provide value other than in promoting image content (good for building affective loyalty to a company or organization). Suggestions welcome.

A few statistics stand out: 53% of Twitter users tweet recommendations for products and services; 79% of online consumers trust the opinions of people THEY DON'T KNOW.

And one opinion is right on the mark: "Most businesses simply talk at their clients on social media. The successful ones monitor what is being said and respond. This can change people's opinions instantly."

1. A lot of social media and digital work is being done in-house today, rather than being outsourced to public relations agencies or digital/social media boutiques.
2. Perhaps because it is the guardian of reputation, the corporate communications function within organizations tends to spearhead social web animation.

. . . That's at least one question companies ask as they consider including blogger campaigns in their marketing strategies.

The question is more complex than it looks and involves ethical (a system of moral principles) and moral (what is right and wrong) dilemmas.

(Conflict alert: I work here.) Hill & Knowlton (Hill + Knowlton Strategies in the U.S.) is hosting a panel in Toronto on Thursday that has sufficinet diversity among its panelists to suggest the discussion may be truly a debate. It might even be heated (hands rubbing gleefully):

Alexa Clark @alexaclark: social entrepreneur, author, photographer & social media addict. Founder of CheapEats, Secret Pickle and HoHoTO.

Erica Ehm, @YummyMummyClub CEO of YummyMummyClub.ca - a sexy online magazine that speaks to the woman in every mom.

Matt Hartley @thehartley Editor, FP Tech Desk at National Post. Amateur gamer. Jays fan. Pizza aficionado. Downright cromulent.

Zach Bussey @zachbussey Social media consultant, blogger and web radio personality. I love discussion and debate, have a knack for creating it and I like my media to be social.

Facilitated by Eden Spodek @EdenSpodek Work as a digital strategist. Play at Bargainista.ca, CommunityDivas.com and @PodCampToronto. Passionate about communication and community.

Since I had prepared some notes, that frankly read like a manifesto, I thought I would post them here just to show those who didn't want to attend what they missed. They are just notes, so forgive any faults in syntax. :)

1. I would rather be an activist today than when I was a radical because there is immense political power possible through well-planned use of the social web. In fact, a meta review of studies on the impact of web campaigns on real–life decisions concluded that there is a demonstrable positive impact of such campaigns on off–line mobilization. (Henrik Serup Christensen).
2. The fact that people are more networked today than at any other point in history means that even under repressive regimes they have access to more information, many more avenues to engage in public discourse, a unique facility to form a nexus for action, and a rich new toolbox for protest.
3. Web-based activism can do four things extremely well . . . It can help Educate | Organize | Create the Courage to Act | Provide Direction to Action and for that, as an apostate radical campaigner, I am grateful
4. To express doubts about 'slacktivism', to find fault when the social web fails to deliver (as it does for politicians in Canada), to dwell on its shortcomings of which there are many not least of which is that it can reinforce shallow and dogmatic thinking, is simply ahistorical, short-sighted and cynical.
5. Even the weak ties that a Gladwell or others talk about as a fault of social web activism can become strong ties . . . Strong enough to create a revolution. Following Greenpeace on Twitter, or liking it on Facebook might be a “weak tie” , but it’s a tie nonetheless, and every little bit helps. Weak ties can become stronger in the hands of the right organizers.
6. Of course there are limitations as Tom Slater warns in a piece called " It takes more than online PR campaigns to change the world" in The Independent online: ". . . activism itself has been consumed by the processes of popular culture, and sterilised by the politics of narcissism. The Occupy Movement epitomises this degradation . . .  just as Facebook users name their musical and literary likes, many aspiring revolutionaries will often list the ideologies and campaigns they subscribe to. In this fashion, activism has been subordinated to the culture of cool, and the new bourgeois radical is nothing more than a hollow composite of revolutionary imagery. As one writer has put it, they are more of a fashion show masquerading as a political movement."
7. Re: #6, of course, I have to say that this is precisely what we revolutionaries said of peace-and-love hippies in the 60s and 70s
8. And, yes, there are dangerous trends, as professor Geist, Lawrence Lessig, Ron Deibert from Citizen Lab, Steve Anderson from Openmedia.ca and others point out . . . governments in general don't like things they can't control . . . our own government's 'lawful access' online spying bill or the US's Stop Online Piracy Act are simply Orwellian both in terms of how they describe the purpose of the legislation, and what it will do to web freedom.
9. And, yes, authoritarian regimes can turn the web to its own repressive uses (tracking activists|hacking opposition sites)
10. But whether or not the social web can facilitate repression, be compromised in the short-run, or allow some to avoid civic responsibility and engagement in mainstream politics (through not voting),  its ability to facilitate better coordinated engagement by activists, gadflies, campaigners, professors and critics, its ability to allow all of us to speak more openly will constrain the ability of governments and politicians, the greedy and the corrupt, the dishonest and the cynical to act without consequence and without public oversight.

I am part of a panel session on November 29, 2011 at 7 p.m. at the Royal Ontario Museum with James Topham from War Child and Michael Geist who is Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. Mark Farmer (@Markus64) will moderate.

The theme is "the role that new media and the internet play in political advocacy (and) the strategies, implications and effects of this growing platform."

I'll have to work hard to hold my own with James and Michael.

Google announced this week that it was allowing businesses to set up Google+ pages. Although according to the BBC, "Organisations will not be charged to use the scheme and Google says it will not put adverts on their pages", let's be honest Google isn't a charity and at some point there will be some form of monetization of the fact that these non-people entities (as a colleague calls them) have been given consent to be on this new (sort of) social platform.

After an initial bulge in interest, engagement with G+ has quieted down, maybe because, according to a  complaint in Slate, "There’s nothing to do on Google+, and every time someone figures out a possible use for it, Google turns out the lights."

At least the first part has been true. But now G+ is trying to turn itself into a creative brand playground, for good or bad depending on your perspective on the desirability of non-commercial social platforms. (That's for another post.)

As my colleague Kathryn wrote in an internal email to our social web team:

Businesses, brands, teams, places, plays and other non-people entities will be able to create a profile on Google’s social network with many of the same built-in features as an ordinary Google+ profile. Plus – and this is very cool – page owners will be able to upload media and participate with users in live events and video chats, called Hangouts, on Google+.

In a later blog post, she pointed out:

What is most interesting is the integration with Google search. Since everyone is Googling everything, it makes perfect sense. Using what Google is calling Direct Connect, when you Google by adding + before a word you now get the brand page option (like in Facebook) and will be asked if you want to add that page to your circle. For example, if I were to write in +Motorola, Google would say ask me if I want to add +Motorola to one of my Google+ circles. What this could lead to is brands using ‘+’ as commonly as they do ‘www.’ or ‘facebook.com/’ in marketing materials (i.e. +MuppetsMovie or facebook.com/Muppets).

Maybe if companies use the platform well - and I do worry they won't given the many false starts on Facebook initially - it might just give G+ the haulage it needs in its battle with Facebook, especially if Google provides back-up like the '+' convention. I won't likely invite any companies into my G+ circles, but enough people seem to like 'liking' brands on Facebook that they may gravitate to this new brand home . . . and stay.

But have you ever heard an activist NGO or advocacy group apologize for the purposeful or even unwitting manipulation of an image, or the willful misuse of factually inaccurate information to bolster a position. I asked some activist friends this question and they couldn't think of a single instance.

Ah, you say, but they don't make mistakes, or if they do it shouldn't matter because they have the force of a higher of moral purpose on their side . . . And besides, the rationalization probably goes, 'companies have more resources than we do to make their case' so it is alright for the - let's call it what it is - lie to stand uncorrected.

Having worked in issue management for many years, I can name at least a dozen instances from my own experience in which advocacy groups refused to acknowledge errors or to apologize, for example, for using a wrong image purposely because it helped strengthen their case. Not once in that time has an activist NGO stood up and said 'I am sorry for using what I knew to be an incorrect number or a falsely attributed image. And I regret the harm it caused the company/organization.'

If NGOs are having harder time building broader support for their campaigns, maybe it's because we don't trust them to tell the truth or apologize for the harm they do when they don't.

I would like to see activists held to the same standard as they say their targets should be. Perhaps the public or media will some day ask them to do so. Or maybe once I stop consulting, I'll start a watchdog group for NGO accountability.