Meet Nick Troiano from myImpact

http://bit.ly/bUynVu (pic credit)

Nick Troiano is from Milford, PA and is attending Georgetown University. This 21-year-old entrepreneur and his friend Chris Golden started MyImpact.org to help volunteers record, share and track their impact on Twitter.

Is myImpact important? 

Yes! There is a large body of research that indicates a platform like myImpact can help with volunteer recruitment and retention. Our goal is to use new technology and social media to engage more Americans in citizen service, increase the effectiveness of service programs and demonstrate that service is a solution to systemic national problems. 

Facebook Connect

I am not a coder, nor do I understand most of what is said when I read about or listen to people talk about code. Even so, it seems that Facebook Developers' tools would allow me to do the technical things that I believe will make my site unique and more useful than existing sites.

This page lists many of the permissions a site can obtain from a user using Facebook Login as the default site login. Some of the things I would like to do, like access group data, would require extended permission codes, which people may be hesitant to allow. This means that I will have to ensure that my site's features, especially the friend and group based focus, are simple enough and compelling enough to convince users to give it a try.

Recommitting

After an LSAT, a leadership retreat, and a Teach for America interview, I'm ready to jump back in and plug away at this thing called entrepreneurship. October really showed how important it is that an entrepreneur's idea can and is and must be his baby, that nothing is more important, even if those other things floating around are much more real and tangible than an idea in one's head. I've lost almost an entire month so now it's time to get my act together and put things at full speed.

My Dad sent me a website he thought was similar to my idea: http://www.sweatmonkey.org/. It's a superbly organized and it looks great. It is similar to my idea in that it connects service organizations to volunteers. It also seems to be mostly targeted to high school students, which would be part of my target audience. The difference, though, is that mine would connect to Facebook, which allows for a viral marketing effect to happen in a much quicker and more efficient manner.

One of the best things about SweatMonkey? It's creator was a sophomore in high school!

I'm Not Alone

I found a website today that works on a similar principle as the one which I proposed last week. My Impact allows users to track and share their volunteer activities via twitter. It has a good layout and sponsors and is easy to navigate. The idea's really solid and the twitter integration is certainly a good idea.

Though we might compete, I don't think that the existence of MyImpact precludes the utility of another option, specifically one connected to Facebook. The FacebookConnect option allows for more social connections for volunteerism and would allow for a larger userbase, as more people are on Facebook than Twitter.

I'll keep looking for other sites that work on similar ideas as mine. And, good luck and all the best MyImpact!

My First Big Idea

For my entrepreneurial journalism class, I will be creating a business plan for an online company. Our final project will be presenting our plan to venture capitalists and many of our assignments will be based on coming up with, researching, or putting together our plan. Even though it isn't secret, I'll be using the tag "secret project" to keep track of my ideas and such. Note that all written content (and much of the photographic content) on this blog is my own, and so will be my ideas for the project.

My first "big" idea came to me either while falling asleep last night or waking up this morning. Luckily, I didn't forget it as I do most things that I think of at either of those times. It would be a website promoting volunteerism and active citizenship for all ages. It would use Facebook connect as its log-in (like Jibe) and using the users Facebook profile and groups, each users page would work as a hub presenting various service opportunities within that users interests, networks, and groups. It would also track service via a simple interface that would allow users to submit it and then potentially compete against other users on an individual, group, or network basis.