Yesterday I gave an example about how one NGO got it all wrong in the social media space. Today I’ve got an example of a group that has it 95% correct. Kiva.org is a micro-finance institution that partners individual donors from around the world (people like you and me) with localized lending institutions who provide small loans to people in developing countries that want to take out small loans (usually less than $2,000). Their general UI and the service that their site provides is an exceptional example of how to make social media also offer utility.

Now Kiva is partnering with Facebook and a start-up group called Involver to run a marketing campaign targeted towards spurring interest and attracting new lenders.

Involver does this by distributing what is essentially a widget that runs a commercial about Kiva and by showing footage of the people who are actually benefiting from these loans. There’s also a buttons to “SignUp”, “Lend”, or to “Invite” your friends and acquaintances. Most of these options take you off Facebook to Kiva, which is a shame. They should have wrapped this tool around an API that allows you to sign up to Kiva with your existing Facebook account. That would result in a higher viewer to new member conversion rate and would have been a great example of how to leverage Facebook’s new data portability platform.

Regardless, this is a great move by Kiva.org and a smart move to use the dominance of Facebook to serve their altruistic motives.

About the Author: Jonathan Gosier (Founder) is an American-born software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he is working on two fronts: to encourage western businesses and investors to engage African entrepreneurs and to encourage the adoption of computers, programming and use of the internet in the developing regions of Africa. He is a huge advocate for promoting the ways in which a semantic web will benefit emerging economies in the world.

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