SocialVibe Brings Traditional Trick-or-Treat Charity Efforts to Millions of Global Facebook, MySpace and Twitter Users. 'CLICK 4 GOOD' BRINGS RELIEF TO THOSE IN NEED charity: water, Stand Up 2 Cancer(TM), Keep a Child Alive and The Surfrider Foundation Band Together To Create Change

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26 // -- SocialVibe (www.socialvibe.com), the leading social media utility that empowers people to benefit their causes by engaging with brands, announced the program "Click 4 Good" today. Expanding real world trick-or-treating online, Click 4 Good is a virtual neighborhood on SocialVibe (www.socialvibe.com/click4good) comprised of houses representing charities, each of which aim to bring relief to those in need.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091026/LA98369)

Partnerships with charity: water, Stand Up 2 Cancer, Keep A Child Alive and The Surfrider Foundation give millions of users the opportunity to provide relief around the globe without donating their own money. By visiting a house within this virtual cul-de-sac, contributions will be made to fund efforts by the following organizations:

• charity: water: Provides clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
• Stand Up 2 Cancer: Aims to urgently move cancer research forward by advancing technology available to scientists and clinicians.
• Keep a Child Alive: Provides life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, care and support to children and families whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India.
• The Surfrider Foundation: Dedicated to protecting and preserving our world's oceans, waves and beaches.
  

Each time a visitor clicks on a virtual house, a donation is made on their behalf to the corresponding charity. SocialVibe users can share their impact with friends on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, bebo, myYearbook and other social properties. For every visitor who earns a treat, a real social impact will be made.

"Social Networks are a powerful platform for social change by empowering millions of users to encourage their friends to get involved," said SocialVibe CEO Jay Samit. "Through Click 4 Good, the focus of Halloween shifts from sharing candy to virally being able to share with those in need."

"I am very excited about Click 4 Good shifting the focus of Halloween from candy to relief for those in need," says 17 year-old SocialViber user Haley Proehl of Reno, Nevada. "I have trick-or-treated for UNICEF in the past, but I am excited about SocialVibe making it easy for me to help out multiple charities!"

Click 4 Good will be live through November 1. To find out more and start trick-or-treating for good, please visit www.socialvibe.com/click4good.

About SocialVibe

SocialVibe (www.socialvibe.com) is the leading social media utility that empowers people to benefit their causes and communities by engaging with brand sponsors and sharing branded content with their social graph. SocialVibe recognizes that in social media individuals hold the key to generating attention and influence that brands need. Through SocialVibe's advertising model, brands have a unique way of interacting with individuals and accessing the content they create. Ranked by Quantcast among the top 200 US web sites, SocialVibe raises money for charities through the extensions of the SocialVibe utility onto sites like Facebook, MySpace, bebo, myYearbook, Twitter, WordPress.com and Blogger.com. SocialVibe is backed by venture capital firms Redpoint Ventures and JAFCO Ventures.

Learn more: www.socialvibe.com

About charity: water

charity: water is a non-profit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 1 in 6 people on the planet don't have clean water to drink. Dirty water and a lack of basic sanitation kills 4,500 children every day. charity: water is trying to change that.

Learn more: www.charitywater.org

About Stand Up 2 Cancer

Stand Up 2 Cancer is launching a new movement to attack cancer once and for all by pushing promising scientific breakthroughs to the finish. Cancer takes one person every minute. One life in a moment. SU2C is calling on the public to help take matters into our own hands, investing in a revolution that will change the way scientists and clinicians work to understand and treat these diseases. Stand Up 2 Cancer is more than a rallying cry. It is a galvanizing force created to urgently move cancer research forward.

Learn more: www.standup2cancer.org/

About Keep a Child Alive

Keep a Child Alive is dedicated to providing life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, care and support services to children and families whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India by directly engaging the global public in the fight against aids. Keep a Child Alive is committed to direct action, and remains small and bureaucracy-free so that their speed of response is never hampered. KCA offers a very real solution to the problem, all on a personal scale. Since its inception in 2003, Keep a Child Alive has saved more than 50,000 lives. They currently provide funding to 8 clinical and orphan care sites in 5 countries: India, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.

Learn more: www.keepachildalive.org

About The Surfrider Foundation

The Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit, grassroots environmental organization dedicated to protection and enjoyment of our world's oceans, waves and beaches. Founded in 1984 by a handful of surfers in Malibu, California, the organization has grown to over 50,000 activists and 80 chapters across the world.

Learn more: www.surfrider.org

SOURCE SocialVibe

Alliance of Youth Movements to Convene Second-Annual Summit on Social Change and the Role of Technology. Partners Include Facebook(TM), Google, Howcast Media, MTV, MySpace, PepsiCo, the U.S. Department of State, YouTube and Causecast.org

NEW YORK, Oct. 1 // -- The Alliance of Youth Movements officially announced its second-annual Summit to take place on October 14-16 in Mexico City. The event will convene individuals, government officials, academics, and private and public sector leaders from around the world to explore ways to advance grassroots movements seeking positive social change through 21(st) century technology and tools.

Sponsored by Causecast.org, Facebook, Gen Next, Google, Hi5, Howcast Media, MTV, MySpace, PepsiCo, Univision Interactive Media, Inc., the U.S. Department of State, WordPress.com and YouTube, the Summit will explore the role of technology in connecting young people working to end violence throughout Latin America and around the world. Mexico City was selected as the location for the 2009 Summit given its ongoing challenges in addressing violence and crime.

Speaking at TecMilenio University in Mexico in March, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said of the upcoming Summit, "Young people around the world are poised to lead this kind of innovative citizen empowerment - which is why the United States is supporting a summit here in Mexico of Alliance of Youth Movements - to connect up young people working to end violence throughout Latin America - whether it's domestic violence or dating violence or lawlessness in the streets of your community, we must all take a stand against violence. And this is a new tool that will help."

The Summit will assemble more than 15 private and public partners with individuals working to promote social change and those who have already pioneered successful grassroots movements.

"The Alliance of Youth Movements Summit is a truly important and exciting event that brings together important leaders and social activists to explore how we can better promote real social change by using simple, easy-to-access technology," said Oscar Morales, founder of the Columbia-based group One million voices against FARC. Morales, who attended the 2008 Summit, catalyzed one of the world's largest campaigns against a terrorist organization using the social networking Web site Facebook.

Many of today's technology leaders are supporting the Summit and echo Morales's enthusiasm. "Online technology has unprecedented potential to help us work together to address some of the world's most urgent problems," said Megan J. Smith, vice president of new business development and general manager of Google.org. "We are proud to support the Alliance of Youth Movements and share its vision to empower citizens and communities to influence positive change through the use of today's technology."

"This is a truly unique, exciting and inspiring event," said Jason Liebman, CEO of Howcast Media, known for Howcast.com, a top-rated Web site that engages consumers to watch and share free how-to videos. "The Alliance of Youth Movements Summit is the ultimate 'how-to' guide because it shares best practices and innovative ideas for how to employ technological tools in social movements," noted Liebman, who is also a co-founder of the Alliance of Youth Movements, the nonprofit organization behind the Summit.

"Today we have the power to communicate and connect in real-time through online tools like Twitter," said Jack Dorsey, chairman and co-founder of Twitter. "Traditional social movements can now take advantage of these revolutionary technologies to spread their messages more rapidly and effectively," continued Dorsey.

"We support The Alliance of Youth Movements and especially the passion, purpose and creativity that young people possess," said Richard Lee, vice president of marketing at PepsiCo International. "Today is a moment in time when one individual, with the use of technology, can create positive change in the world...and Pepsi will strive to enable this change."

The event advances the overarching goal of the Alliance of Youth Movements, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of global leaders by providing training and support to those who rely on technology to advance social movements. It also provides training to those looking to integrate technology and new media tools with existing grassroots efforts.

"The impact of using online tools and social media to advance positive social change is truly remarkable and exciting. It is critical to encourage and enable today's youth to apply these technologies as means to catalyze social movements around the world," said Jared Cohen, who serves on the U.S. Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff. Cohen, who helped conceive the Alliance of Youth Movements in 2008, described the Summit as an "illustrative example of 21(st) century statecraft."

"The growth and adoption of the social Web has given power to the once powerless around the world," said Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and policy at Facebook. "An individual's voice can now be easily amplified to influence communities and governments. This Summit is an important opportunity to share ideas and learnings on how technology can create movements for change."

Individuals along with leading technology companies, NGOs, and government leaders will be included on the Summit agenda and will discuss a variety of practical topics, including politics and technology, sustainability and long-term planning, and the use of viral videos in social movements. The sessions will be streamed live during the conference through news sources and other Web sites.

To learn more about how to get involved in the 2009 Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in Mexico City, visit http://youthmovements.howcast.com/.

About the Alliance of Youth Movements

Alliance of Youth Movements is non-profit 501(c)(3) organization comprised of individuals from the private sector, NGO community and of some of the most successful digital movements around the world. The Alliance of Youth Movements serves as a third-party vehicle that positively empowers leaders to affect nonviolent change in the world by creating and promoting the use of 21(st) century tools to safeguard human rights, promote good governance and foster unprecedented civic empowerment. It brings together selected leaders of organizations with influential leaders in technology, media, private and public sectors. The organization was formed during a December 2008 summit that brought together leading experts in social media with the most pioneering grassroots movements for the first time in history. For more information, visit www.youthmovements.howcast.com.

    Press Details:
    PR@allianceofyouthmovements.org 

SOURCE Alliance of Youth Movements

SocialVibe and Automattic Bring Power to the Publishers

LOS ANGELES, June 15 // -- SocialVibe, a social media utility that connects brands and people across social media, and Automattic, the company which leads the WordPress Open Source project and runs WordPress.com, announced today they have partnered to allow WordPress.com's 7M+ bloggers to benefit from the content they are creating and the audience they are attracting. The partnership allows WordPress.com bloggers to "get sponsored" in a way that is both rewarding and helps further engage the bloggers' audience by a paying brand and earn real money for their charity of choice.

SocialVibe was founded on the principle of empowering personal publishers (better known as people) in social media. Now more than ever, brands are looking for ways to partner with people creating social media content who are influencing the consumer marketplace. This new partnership gives WordPress.com bloggers a tool to take that power and create benefit for themselves and their causes by partnering with brands.

The partnership includes the implementation of a side bar widget that takes just a few moments to add and provides readers the unique opportunity to complete a brand engagement (such as rating a video), thus earning money for charity. Each time an engagement is made with a sponsor such as TNT or Sprint, the blog publisher earns a micro-donation to his or her chosen charity.

That impact is immediately visible on the widget, i.e., for a blogger who has chosen to support charity: water their SocialVibe badge might read 'My blog has provided 63 cups of clean water for people in need'. Users can switch their cause and sponsor as often as they like, and receive regular updates from their charity about goal progress and impact.

"We're excited about the addition of SocialVibe to the WordPress.com widget library," says Raanan Bar-Cohen, Vice President Media Services for Automattic. "This will give our customers the valuable opportunity to utilize their blogs for their choice of benefit."

For the brands involved, this platform provides a golden opportunity to get unique endorsements in a highly engaging manner within social media. For the WordPress.com community, it is a way to pool their individual influences to create positive change in the world.

"We are thrilled to be launching SocialVibe on WordPress.com", says Joe Marchese, President, SocialVibe. "SocialVibe continues to see tremendous growth as we provide more value to people and our brand partners. Automattic is an ideal partner for us, and we are excited to give their community a direct connection to major brands and the opportunity to receive benefit from those brands for their blogging."

Through the SocialVibe system, people have raised close to half a million dollars for charities in just over a year's time. Everyday, members are sharing their brand sponsors with millions of friends on social platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, and now WordPress.com. Members can select from an expanding and varied rosters of brand sponsors, including Sony Pictures, Colgate and Kraft Foods, to benefit one of more than 30 non-profit organizations, such as World Wildlife Fund, DonorsChoose and charity: water.

For more info about the SocialVibe widget, check out the WordPress blog.

For self-hosted WordPress sites SocialVibe has also released an Open Source widget which is available from the WordPress.org Plugin directory and can be 1-click installed from the WordPress dashboard by searching for "SocialVibe". For an example of the widget in action, please see leading entertainment blog JustJared.com.

Learn about how else you can use SocialVibe on your social networks by visiting SocialVibe.com.

About SocialVibe:

SocialVibe recognizes that individuals hold the key to generating attention and wielding influence in social media. It's a powerful new way for brands to interact with people and change the way brands participate in social media. SocialVibe allows people to choose a brand to endorse, earning opportunities to get brand perks and points. The points that members earn are then turned into funds for the charitable cause of their choice.

SocialVibe received $8 million in Series B funding led by JAFCO Ventures in December 2008, bringing its total raised to just over $12 million. Previous investor Redpoint Ventures also participated in the funding.

SOURCE SocialVibe