I know that is not the point of this post, but it makes me wonder if we need to rethink the terms conversation and discussion as they relate to blogs.

We seem to be moving into an era where the Attention Economy is king – this is not good news for philanthropy.

Despite this gloomy development, I think philanthropy has, quite characteristically, been slow to evolve and use the Internet’s to its benefit. There’s still a lot of untapped potential.

I think an essential characteristic of new philanthropic initiatives online – and this is something a young person is more likely to understand intuitively, as we’re the main consumer of sites like Facebook, myspace etc – is that it’s increasingly about just offering groups and issues ‘blank canvases’ on which groups then ‘user-generate’ the content. Change.org is a very good example of this.

As a young, wannabe entrepreneur, I think there’s some encouragement out there for me to get involved – like the 21st Century Challenge Prize here at Oxford – and the Internet is a wonderful resource in terms of blogs – like this one – which provide the much-needed iiinsight into what philanthropy is actually like. This is something I have found I have very little awareness of, but Philanthropy has become such a monolithic entity, largely unchanging for over a century, that even the youth of today who want to do things differently, can’t just ignore it and its expectations, demands, and the way the regulatory/tax framework has been built around it.

Oh, nand I’d like some clearer tax/reg benefits for social entrepreurship, and for those to be harmonised around the world. The Internet is largely borderless – but when you move into business suddenly nationality and different tax codes becomes relevant. What a pain in the ass when you’re young!