Krishna De: Insights From Ireland On Digital Marketing, Social Media And Entrepreneurship

Ireland has made significant progress in improving levels of broadband coverage and take-up in the last two years, however we are still behind competitor countries in terms of rolling out high speed next generation networks (NGN), according to a new broadband benchmarking report published by Forfás today.

Broadband connections now account for 90 percent of internet connections, compared to 58 percent in Q1 2007, which represents a significant transition from dial-up. Ireland has 21.4 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants compared to the OECD average of 22.4 (excluding mobile broadband and leading countries such as the Netherlands (38.1) and Denmark (37).

The download speeds available in Ireland are greatly improved on recent years, but remain below the fastest speeds available to customers in other OECD countries. In Ireland 0.6 percent of total broadband connections are fibre connections. This compares to 11.3 percent of subscribers on average in OECD-28 countries.

Further documentation about Ireland's Broadband Performance and policy actions are available at: http://www.forfas.ie/publications/2010/title,5376,en.php

Contributions continue to pour in for relief efforts in Haiti. Six days after the massive earthquake struck, donors have contributed more than $210-million to major U.S. relief groups, a Chronicle tally finds.

The pace of giving for Haiti is running ahead of the amount donated in the same period after the Asian tsunamis in 2004, but slower than the outpouring of gifts after the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In the six days after the flooding started in New Orleans, Americans gave at least $457-million for relief efforts. In the nine days after the Asian tsunamis, major U.S. relief groups raised $163-million.

Many groups are raising large sums for relief efforts in Haiti online and through text messages. By Monday, the American Red Cross had received more than $21-million through its campaign to encourage $10 gifts through texts.

That’s a record for the group in terms of text messages. In contrast, it raised $200,000 from texts during the 2008 hurricane season.

Over all, the Red Cross had raised $112-million through Monday evening.

I recently covered different ways that social media is being used at times of crisis on my main blog: http://www.krishnade.com/blog/2010/haiti

If you are a non profit have you considered text donations?

There are many advantages to 'mobile giving' and is a very fast way for donors to make a donation - htere is no need to write a cheque, make a phone call or log onto your computer.

Your call to action be it on a website or in the main stream media can be responded to immediately.

So if you are working with a non profit, perhaps you could encourage them to consider text giving to support their cause?

TechCrunch has a list of the different ways you can donate via text messaging if you are in the US: http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/18/mobile-giving-haiti-20-million