In the midst of last week’s earnings call, after the company had released strong results, Demand Media CEO and co-founder Richard Rosenblatt made an unusual declaration about its once-tight affiliation with now-disgraced professional racing cyclist Lance Armstrong.

Said Rosenblatt about the Santa Monica, Calif., social content company to Wall Street analysts about the status of the relationship in the wake of Armstrong being stripped of his many Tour de France titles:

“Our relationship is with the Livestrong Foundation, not with Lance, and we are aligned in empowering people to live healthier lives, and we support the important work of the foundation. We have built a powerful destination, popular applications and a very engaged community. None of this has changed and we have seen no material impact on the consumer traffic or metrics.”

In reality, the once-close relationship between Demand and Armstrong ended a while ago, even though the athlete’s cancer-fighting charity has been a high-profile shareholder since early 2008. At the time, Demand struck a four-year exclusive deal with Livestrong to create a health and wellness site, and also got a perpetual license to the Livestrong.com domain name.

But Armstrong — despite appearing at the Web 2.0 conference in 2008 with Rosenblatt — eventually had little to do with the Demand brand.

And it is down to zero involvement now, after he recently stepped down as chairman of Livestrong, due to the doping controversy. That mess has caused a lot of the brands he was tied up with, such as Nike, to disassociate themselves from Armstrong himself, although not from the Livestrong Foundation.

That has also been Demand’s direction, especially given that the commercial Web site, which has become the No. 3 health property in the U.S., is one of the company’s strongest ones. That adds up to about 26 million monthly unique visitors, a gain of 97 percent since last year.

But with that success, why did Demand make the statement at earnings — as well as putting up a blog post recently clarifying that it had “no direct relationship” with Armstrong?

Apparently, according to several sources, Demand had to move to be as explicit has possible, not because of consumers, but because of advertisers.

“The advertisers did care about the affiliation,” said one source. “So it was time to say in no uncertain terms to them and shareholders that Lance Armstrong has nothing to do with Demand.”

Or, as the blog post in late October noted rather strongly:

“We don’t believe the struggles of one individual should detract from the millions of real people who have benefited from work that’s been done to prevent cancer and improve the lives of those unfortunate enough to have it.”

Or, as they say in bike racing, Armstrong had simply become too much of a wheel sucker.

Apple hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Not a whole lot, except they’re all featured users on Mulu.me, a Pinterest-like e-commerce site that helps users generate money for their favorite causes.

The site opens to the public today, after having been in beta mode since early December.

Mulu.me, which was created by San Francisco-based entrepreneur Amaryllis Fox, is an online retail space through which “regular” people, retailers and more recognizable names can recommend Web pages — whether a YouTube video, a link to an item of clothing, even a pair of airline tickets — all for the purpose of driving purchases. On their profiles, users can identify charities for which they’re raising money.

Here’s how it works: Mulu generates revenue from affiliate program fees, then splits it with the “curator,” and the curator decides what percentage of that goes to his or her charity of choice.

So if a Mulu user were to drive a buyer to a product available on Amazon.com, Mulu would get a cut of that purchase — 4 percent to 8 percent — of which the person who originally posted the product would get a revenue share of 2 percent to 4 percent.

Ultimately, this can leave little left over for charity — and there’s no mandate saying users have to give to one — but for some, tying buying to a cause is a motivating factor.

One thing that sets Mulu apart from other curation sites, or even a site like Pinterest, is its question-and-answer element. Users can post a question to the boards, just as they would an image, Web site link or video, and receive answers from other Mulu members.

Around New Year’s Eve, for example, I asked for recommendations about affordable but good champagnes, and received two answers (from people I didn’t know) from the Mulu community. The answers were helpful; what wasn’t as helpful was that the subsequent email notifications simply said I had received an answer, but didn’t include any other content. This is great for Mulu, as it drives people back to the site to see what the answers are, but it can be irksome for users. The company says it is considering changing the notification system.

Aside from a few other features that set Mulu apart — its curator “guru points,” for instance — the site works a bit like OpenSky, an e-commerce site that features celebrities as curators and splits the gross profits with them. OpenSky, which launched in 2009, started out as an e-commerce platform for bloggers, but gained little traction; the company later changed its direction and became a straight shopping site, with “influencers” pushing the products (OpenSky holds inventory; Mulu does not). It’s a newish twist on e-commerce that challenges the traditional recommendation systems.

“It’s not like an Amazon.com or Best Buy recommendation for a digital camera — it’s a professional photographer’s recommendation for a camera,” Fox said. “We’re moving toward a grassroots curation of product discovery online.”

Mulu.me is fun to browse and slightly addictive, regardless of whether the stream is filled with famous people, friends or people you might not even know.

The company is planning a more formal launch around the SXSW Interactive festival in March, which will also include the introduction of a Mulu iPhone app.

While online donations account for only 7.6% of total charitable giving, according to Blackbaud’s 2010 Online Giving Report, it is the fastest-growing segment, increasing 40% in 2010 from the year before, according to a report from fund-raising software provider Convio.

That has helped juice the growth of online “giving platforms” with names like CauseVox, Razoo, Network for Good and GlobalGiving. These websites — some nonprofit and some for-profit — serve as gateways, making it easier for donors to give money and offering additional services such as website design and campaign promotion.

But those extras come with a price.

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In an all-hands memo first published by MacRumors, CEO Tim Cook announced a new program under which Apple will match the charitable contributions of employees up to $10,000 per year.

“I am very happy to announce that we are kicking off a matching gift program for charitable donations,” Cook said in the memo, whose authenticity we have confirmed. “We are all really inspired by the generosity of our co-workers who give back to the community and this program is going to help that individual giving go even farther.”

As of September 2010, Apple had 46,600 employees worldwide, so this is potentially quite a bit of money.

Initially available to full-time employees in the U.S., the program will be extended to other countries in time.

Below, Cook’s memo in full.

Team:

I am very happy to announce that we are kicking off a matching gift program for charitable donations. We are all really inspired by the generosity of our co-workers who give back to the community and this program is going to help that individual giving go even farther.

Starting September 15, when you give money to a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, Apple will match your gift dollar-for-dollar, up to $10,000 annually. This program will be for full-time employees in the US at first, and we’ll expand it to other parts of the world over time.

Thank you all for working so hard to make a difference, both here at Apple and in the lives of others. I am incredibly proud to be part of this team.

If you’d like more information on the program, you can get it on HRWeb, which can be easily accessed through AppleWeb.

Tim

Founded in 1999, the Salt Lake City company offers a wide variety of merchandise, ranging from bedding and home decor to appliances and sporting goods–at discounted prices.

But with a little bit of marketing polish, the practice has become a new, chic burgeoning industry.

A discount center conjures up imagines of large warehouses with cement floors full of unsold items. A flash sales deal, however, leads you believe you’ve found a pair of designer jeans for half off after sifting through dozens of boutiques on Rodeo Drive.

With that in mind, a micro industry of flash sales sites has been born.

The Gilt Groupe, HauteLook, One Kings Lane, Rue La La and Jackthreads all have their own niche, focusing on curating clothing for women or men, or furniture and home decor.

One big question is, is there enough inventory to sustain it all?

“It’s the dirty little secret in manufacturing,” said Overstock’s CEO Patrick Byrne. “The answer is that there is far more than you can possibly think. A company will say they don’t have overstock, but if you talk to the CFO, they will ask, ‘what can you truck away?’ The world is filled with excess inventory and is looking for channels to get rid of it.”

But just because the inventory is there, Byrne doesn’t believe they can all survive.

“We think the world only needs one pipeline, and we’ve built the one pipeline to do that,” he said. “The suppliers are better off with one big pipeline. If one pipeline emerges, where all the liquidation gets done, there will be price integrity in the rest of their marketplace. It’s our aspiration to be that one thick pipeline.”

On average, he said Overstock’s inventory is about 60 percent off the manufacturer’s recommended price. He said, general retail stores sell items for an average of 15 percent off and Walmart is even more heavily discounted at 30 to 40 percent off. Sites like Amazon.com, are normally somewhere in between, and flash sales generally claim discounts of 50 to 70 percent.

About a year ago, Overstock jumped on the bandwagon to launch Eziba.com, which focuses on selling a small number of items, ranging from furniture to jewelry, at heavily discounted prices via a daily email.

Eziba has the boutique look, with large photos of the products and colors bleeding off the page. That’s in sharp contrast to Overstock’s more straight-forward layout that stresses searching and browsing for items that are displayed in small thumbnail pictures.

Byrne said one of the big differences between items sold on Eziba and those sold on Overstock is the amount of inventory in stock.

Items on Eziba may have up to 5,000 on the virtual shelves, whereas products sold on Overstock have only a couple of hundred left.  Another difference is that there’s only a dozen or so items for sale on Eziba at any given time, while Overstock’s inventory spans 300,000 items (not including books and movies).

One of the big differences between Eziba and the competition is that it’s able to leverage Overstock’s infrastructure.

For instance, Eziba customers get the same customer service as Overstock and have the same flat-rate shipping of $2.99 an order.

So far, Byrne says the introduction of other sites has not affected the company’s business.

“It’s like swimming around in Lake Michigan and asking did you bump into each other. The world is so much bigger than anyone gets. It’s so enormous,” he said.

Overstock has been steadily growing over the years.

In 1999, the company recorded revenues of $1.8 million, and last year, revenues totaled $1.1 billion. Still, it’s a microcosm of the super-large e-commerce world. The company’s stock is trading at $14.31 a share for a market cap of $333.4 million. In contrast, Amazon’s is valued at around $75 billion, and eBay is worth $40 billion.

Generally, Byrne categorizes the company as a nice profitable company that has built a very solid foundation over the past few years.

He said the recent stability, compared to the start-up years, gives him the chance to experiment with new lines of business. ”We are very agile. We can develop new things really quickly and snap them into the platform we’ve built.”

In addition to Eziba, the company also runs Worldstock, a site that helps artisans from around the world sell their crafts online. Byrne made the recent decision to give all of its profits to a charity that’s focused on helping build classrooms in developing countries around the world.

It’s also recently launched Main Street Revolution, which helps small business around the U.S. sell their goods online, ranging from children’s clothing to specialty home-made cookies.

The company’s latest endeavor includes experimenting with a significant rebranding of the Web site.

In January, it introduced the domain name O.CO, which is a shortcut to its regular Web site. During an initial introductory period, customers who shop at O.CO will receive free shipping.

Byrne said the reason behind the name is to have a more recognizable brand across the 90 countries it operates in. While the domain name will change permanently internationally, the company is only experimenting with the name domestically.

The photo + caption combination seems to work particularly well on Tumblr (and Lolcats) but you can get a pretty good sense of what’s going on via a few samples below. But for my money the best stuff is also the stuff that makes good use of the f-bomb, so you’ll want to see those on the site itself.

What’s great about TRPDSAA, IMHO, is that while a lot of this stuff is inside baseball, you should still be able to appreciate it without knowing what, say, “call to action” is supposed to mean. It’s clearly the product of someone who loves advertising and hates it, too.

And that person works in advertising, of course. Here’s a brief email interview I conducted with 27-year-old E.B. Davis III, a copywriter at Washington, D.C.-based GMMB:

Peter Kafka: Looks like you just started the Tumblr now. Why?

E. B. Davis III: For fun. To take the piss out. Advertising can be a lot of fun, but we get caught up in minutiae and nitpicking and buzzwords. We tend to forget we’re talking to people who don’t really want to talk to us.

Kafka: What provoked it, and what are you trying to do?

Davis: I made some pictures, put them on a blog, and showed two or three people, hoping they would laugh. I expected that to be the end of it. Tumblr only allowed 15 posts on the front page, so I only made 13 pictures, because I didn’t expect people to want to even bother going to a second page. Quick, easy, in and out. Now there are 29 posts (the rest from other people), with 300 submissions I need to find the time to post.

Kafka: Given that you’re satirizing advertising but work in advertising, should we assume you want to be doing something else?

Davis: I am satirizing advertising, and I work in advertising, but I don’t think we should assume I want to be doing something else. Advertising got great potential to be an idea factory. I think we’ve got the potential to make short movies, full-length movies, music videos, and a lot of cool other shit. I work at a social-good marketing agency, and I think advertising has taken a huge step forward over the past couple of years in connecting buying things to doing good. Easy charity. I was already going to buy that Coca-Cola anyway, and now it’s helping to help someone else. Awesome. We get free radio and free television because of advertising. It’s not the worst industry in the world. I have great hope for what advertising can do. It’s just, you know, we mostly end up making a print ad.

At the same time, I’m learning that I don’t need advertising to do what I want. I can make stuff without them. Hence this blog, among other things.

Kafka: How much of the site is you, and how much of it comes from contributors? And do contributors send in art and text, or just text? How much traffic are you getting now?

Davis: [I made] 13 original posts, and now people are making the content (mostly unasked). I’m assuming they’re mostly advertising folk, and I worry that the thing’s too insider-y for anyone else to really care about it. Not that they should care about it. It is a Stupid Thing. My favorite contributors do the work of putting their words on a picture for me, but some just send headlines and I have to put them together.

I have no idea how much traffic I’m getting. I’ve got about 3,000 followers and a lot of tweets and shit.

Kafka: What happens now?

Davis: I have no plans for what’s next. Keep making posts until people run out of interest. I don’t think these types of sites really lead to anything. They’re fun for a minute and then you move on. I don’t want to make any more of it than that. I’m ready to start working on new ideas, but I don’t plan to use the blog to promote it. I don’t want this to become a ‘self-promotion’ thing. I didn’t really have my name attached to it in the beginning, but some people found out it was me, so my name’s out there, but it wasn’t my intention.

It’s just for fun.

BoomTown arrived late to the Facebook mobile event for the press due to traffic related to the parade today for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory–and where I would much rather be right now.

Go Giants!

10:53 am PT: In any case, I am here in the cafeteria of Facebook again, where the company continues its attempts to take over the known digital universe before Google does.

Currently, the social networking giant notes “200 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook from a phone, more than triple the number just one year ago.”

Thus, some new tries of a lot of stuff, such as single sign-on.

Meaning you sign on a Facebook and it signs you on all over the Web (or at least at those in partnership with the company).

Such as at Groupon and Zynga.

This single sign-on stuff has been tried by many before, a kind of Holy Grail of the Web, and where everyone has failed.

But it also the proverbial camel’s nose poking in your digital tent.

As in, the whole Facebook body is surely coming in next.

Facebook’s exec in charge of all this, Eric Tseng, talks about a virtuous circle of single sign-on, happy users and happy developers, sounding as if this is the single biggest problem facing humanity.

A password crisis! Silicon Valley to the rescue!

Perhaps the only issue the now damaged administration of President Barack Obama could actually get some legislation passed on now.

“My fellow Americans, we have too long be stuck in a miasma of forgetting which name of our dog we used for our password plus the number one…”

How much do I want to be at Giants parade right now? Much!

11:02 am: Next, we move onto more ability to show your location to friends on Facebook better and make sense of it by opening location APIs.

More heavy pontificating about what a disaster it is that we cannot properly see where our friends are on Facebook in the real world.

Of course, this leaves out the pertinent point that my “friends” on Facebook are exactly those I do not want to run into at the Starbucks on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, Calif.

Loopt Founder Sam Altman comes up to show off the integration with Facebook Places, where this problem is solved anyway.

“We believe data wants to be unified,” says Altman.

Certainly if you are the Borg, you want it to be unified. Me, not so much.

11:11 am: Now comes the attempted Groupon-killer from Facebook, which is creatively called “Deals.”

This is essentially allowing Facebook Places to locate a person and then merchants to offer deals when a user is nearby via a platform offered by Facebook.

You can do individual deals, such as getting a beer at a bar when you check in. Then, there is a loyalty deal on the phone, taking the place of that dog-eared card you always lose.

And there is the “friend deal.” This is not friends with benefits, sadly.

It means if you check in and bring a lot of folks, one eats free–which sounds just a little naughty.

Also, there is one deal type related to charity.

For the Gap, for example, you get a free jeans if you are among the first 10,000 to check in at a Gap store. There are 500 million Facebook users, so you do the math.

Essentially, it is about getting stuff if you check in, including experiences.

So, just like little white mice in Facebook’s lab, we push the button, we get the cheese. Sigh.

But I wonder if I check in right now, I can be transported to the Giants parade via a time machine. Now that might be something worth handing over my privacy to Facebook.

“The big takeaway for today is that there is obviously a lot of change in the social space,” says Facebook CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. “You can rethink any product area and make it be social.”

Indeed, you can. And Facebook obviously is going to be plowing on through a lot of them in order to solidify its stranglehold on the consumer.

11:23 am: Q&A!

The first question is on privacy and third-party developers giving up your location.

Yes, that!

Zuckerberg makes assurances that the current privacy steps now in place are working just fine and also users need to consent.

“The place information about people is not public,” he says.

There is question from Ben Parr of Mashable, about whether there is an iPad app for Facebook coming.

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” declares Zuckerberg, dismissing the very good question.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” countered Parr, correctly.

“Well, sorry,” said Zuckerberg with more than a little bit of snark.

For a second, he sounds just like the guy from the Facebook movie.

But Zuckerberg quickly declares his love of Apple products and apologizes, although he should not have as it was a funny exchange.

A question about single sign-on. Zuckerberg notes that it has been tried, but the experience was bad.

“What we think is going to happen now is that it is so easy when it works, it is a whole different experience,” he said, comparing it to the way YouTube made video uploading on the Web easier.

Zuckerberg’s goal is that all apps become social, which is also a virtuous circle for Facebook, of course.

A question about the deals offer. It seems for Zuckerberg that Facebook is not getting a cut from retailers right now, as Groupon does.

Ruh-roh, Andrew Mason!

Zuckerberg then notes that the Places offering is going well, without giving a lot of specifics.

At the end, PR maven Brandee Barker wraps it up by saying what I have been thinking this entire time:

“Go Giants!”

A: For peace of mind, you should use a secure file-wiping utility and erase the entire drive using it. Then, presuming you have the original disks, you can reinstall the operating system.

A file-wiping utility erases files, and then overwrites the portions of the hard disk they occupied, as well as free space on the drive, multiple times, usually with zeroes, so the original contents can’t be recovered.

I don’t know which version of the Mac operating system you have, but the original disks that come with most Macs contain a program called Disk Utility that can do this, if you select the “Erase” option and then the “Erase Free Space” option. You will have to first boot the computer up from the operating system disk.

I just got a netbook and need a free or cheap package to read, edit and create Word, Excel, PowerPoint-compatible files. Would Open Office or Google Docs work? I am open to using an online package.

A:Yes. In my limited testing of both, they have done a good job with typical, basic Microsoft Office documents. I can’t say how they’d perform if your documents are especially complex, but, as the programs are free to use, it’s certainly worth a try.

Can Windows 7 be installed on an iMac? Since many of my old files are from a Windows XP computer, would it be better for me to just purchase and load a copy of Win XP on my new iMac instead of trying Windows 7?

A: Windows 7 can indeed be installed on an iMac. Both the Parallels and VMWare Fusion programs that create virtual Windows computers on Macs now support Windows 7.

As for the data files from your Windows XP computer, there is no reason they shouldn’t run in programs under Windows 7 unless they require some older Windows program that isn’t compatible with Windows 7.

However, if you install Parallels or Fusion, you can also opt to set up two virtual Windows machines, one with Windows 7 and one with Windows XP. The only downside is that you’d have to buy and install copies of both versions of Windows.

I should also note that most common file types, like MP3 music files, text files, Microsoft Word files, and JPG picture files, can be handled by Mac programs without installing Windows.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

But that was when people still bought CDs. Now everyone from Britney Spears down to the smallest indie band routinely streams music for free, before the disc–or iTunes download–goes on sale, in order to whet appetites–or at least promote concert tours. No big deal.

But I still like the way that Wilco, the best band of all time in the whole wide world (disclosure: I am a big Wilco fan) handles this: Rather than linking up its free stream in a promotional tie-up, the band waits for the album to leak onto the Web, then streams it on their own site. And they ask fans who have helped themselves to an illegal download to donate to charity.

Slight bummer for Warner Music Group (WMG), which would like to sell as many discs as possible, but good vibes for everyone else. And, in truth, a nice promotion for the band as it heads out on tour this summer.

Here’s how the band describes it, via an email sent out last night:

Well, we made it nearly a month with copies of Wilco (the album) floating around out there before it leaked. Pretty impressive restraint in this day and age. But the inevitable happened last night. Since we know you’re curious and probably have better things to do than scour the internet for a download (though we do understand the attraction of the illicit), we’ve posted a stream of the full album at http://wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/. Feel free to refer to it as “wilco (the stream)” if you must.

We also have our usual guilt abatement plan for downloaders. If you have downloaded the record, we suggest you make a donation to one of the band’s favorite charities, the Inspiration Corporation–an organization we’ve supported in the past & who are doing great work in the city of Chicago. Information and donation button here: http://inspirationcorp.org/.

If you don’t want to click through, here’s a version of the album’s first song, recorded last fall. Not as good as the album cut, in my humble opinion.

BusinessWeek’s Ron Grover says Geffen “doesn’t so much see this as a business venture, but rather as a civic investment.” Newsweek’s Johnnie L. Roberts goes further, suggesting that Geffen would literally turn the Times into a nonprofit if he bought it.

Both Grover and Roberts are longtime media reporting pros, so when they cite sources with knowledge of Geffen’s thinking, I believe them. What I still don’t understand, and what observers and investors I’ve talked to are still puzzled about: How does Geffen plan to do that?

To reiterate: Geffen has reportedly tried to buy the 20 percent stake in the Times now owned by Harbinger Capital, though the two sides couldn’t agree on price. But even if they did, the transaction would only bail out Harbinger, not the Times.

And because the Times has a dual-class stock structure that keeps control of the company in the hands of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, taking on Harbinger’s stake doesn’t give Geffen a foot in the door to the company. It gives him the right to appoint two representatives to the company’s 14-member board of directors, but nothing else. Just ask the Harbinger folks.

Again, there are two plausible ways to acquire the Times:

1. Buy the super-voting shares outright from the Ochs-Sulzbergers, who have said they have no intention of selling. But then again, that’s what the Bancroft family said about Dow Jones, which owns the Wall Street Journal and this Web site. And News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch was able to overcome their objections by offering a 60 percent premium to the company’s share price. Maybe Geffen could try that.
2. Establish a large debt position with the company and exercise the power that comes along with that in the event of a restructuring. The problem: Billionaire Carlos Slim has already done that.

So. Anyone close to David Geffen want to explain what he’s really thinking? I’m all ears.

But even though you can use these services without leaving home, many of them still require you to go to a specific Web site — one you wouldn’t necessarily visit regularly. Sites like Gazelle.com and Venjuvo.com that pay cash for old electronics (or just recycle them) aren’t exactly online destinations.

Now one of those ways to unload your stuff involves a Web site you might visit many times a day. A site that has considerable sway in the social-networking world, where over 175 million active users go to share personal stories, photos and videos with hundreds of “friends.”

That’s right, I’m talking about Facebook. Tuesday, the social-networking giant announced its new Facebook Marketplace, Facebook.com/Marketplace, an integrated application powered by Oodle, known for its work with online classified ads. Marketplace uses colorful icons to represent four actions you can take in its app: Sell It; Sell for a Cause; Give it Away; and Ask for It.

Facebook Marketplace users can pick from 12 categories of listings, as well as buy or sell items for a favorite cause.

Oodle granted me early access to the Marketplace app before it became available Tuesday. A friend of mine and I were both set up with test accounts so that we could see one another’s fake Marketplace items and interact with one another within Marketplace; hundreds of Oodle employees also were testing this. (It was fun to see what people offer for sale when they’re just pretending, like one person who offered to sell everything on a colleague’s desk when he was out.)

Facebook’s original iteration of Marketplace started back in 2007, but was geared toward services like housing and jobs. The Oodle-powered Marketplace is merchandise-centric and includes more detailed organization, deeper integration with Facebook, and ways to buy or sell things to raise money for 1.7 million causes.

It still lacks a built-in electronic payment system, such as PayPal or Discover card, for exchanges between users or donations to causes. Instead, Marketplace encourages its users to exchange money however they choose, like traditional classified ads. And that could cause some obvious problems. For instance, if an item were sold for a cause, the seller could later donate the amount via credit card after closing a listing. But there’s no guarantee that the seller will actually do this. Oodle says it will listen to feedback from the Facebook audience and will try to integrate e-payments, if preferred.

Every posted item can include a location, description, category, photo and an explanation of why it’s in the Marketplace. Each item is reviewed by Oodle’s fraud-detection program, which looks for inappropriate content and suspicious activity, and a post could take up to 30 minutes to appear online after you submit it. My posts displayed almost instantly in the Marketplace newsfeed. Users also can opt to publish their posts to their Facebook profiles.

One example of Marketplace’s newly detailed organization comes in its browsing options. The old version of Marketplace had options to browse through jobs and housing, but not specific categories of items for sale. Now, users can browse through 12 categories of specific items including “Home & Garden,” “Baby & Kid Stuff,” “Tickets” and “Musical Instruments.” Items that don’t fit into these 12 categories are put into an “Everything Else” category.

Each item in Marketplace integrates with Facebook’s familiar format, like having its own online “wall” where questions and comments appear. If you’re looking for something in Marketplace by using the “Ask for It” option, you can recruit people to help you find the item by selecting from your list of friends, which works the same way people can suggest Facebook people to friends who might know them. Glancing at an item shows the seller’s profile photo, a link to all of the person’s listings and a brief history of his or her overall Marketplace activity, such as “3 listings in the last month.”

The integration of charitable causes into Marketplace gives supporters new ways to raise money for a favorite group like the World Wildlife Fund or Habitat for Humanity International. On the Marketplace home page, causes are displayed in a right-hand panel with a daily featured cause. This Featured Cause shows who else supports it and how many items you can buy or sell to support it.

Privacy is a natural concern in online marketplaces. By default, your posted listings are visible to any Facebook member in Marketplace. Users can opt to remain anonymous — they’re listed as “Facebook user is selling a bike,” for example. In that case, the only way someone can contact that person is by posting a comment and waiting for the seller to respond.

People who aren’t members of Facebook can see your listings by browsing and searching Marketplace, but they can’t post, comment or contact users. Unlike online marketplaces or services that can be used by anyone, Marketplace requires that users be members of the site to interact with sellers, which can be a downside. Plenty of people who aren’t on Facebook might not want to join the social-networking phenomenon just to offload the old couch gathering dust in the garage.

All user notifications — messages indicated in red at the bottom right of a Facebook page — will reflect friends’ activities in the Marketplace, unless you reset the notifications of the Facebook Marketplace app to not notify you. I suggest doing this, unless you really want to know about all your friends’ activities in Marketplace.

Four color-coded icons represent activities in Marketplace and are useful when reading lists of items at a glance: A green dollar sign represents Sell It and a red heart represents Sell for a Cause, for example. And details about each cause are integrated within Marketplace.

The Oodle-powered Facebook Marketplace is straightforward and well organized, and if you’re a Facebook user, its format will be familiar. If you’re not, and you’re looking for a way to sell or give items away for a charity or otherwise, Marketplace might encourage you to join the giant social network. But its payment program could be made a lot easier with electronic options.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://solution.allthingsd.com

Did I say that there was no limit to my pandering in order to raise the most money of all in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

I did, indeed!

Thus, this week, the Swisher boys make their annual appearance to deliver a pitch about why you should give early and often to fund technology projects for high school students.

Well, more a threat than the soft sell actually, since they just saw the new Disney film, “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” and are clearly hopped up on tiny dog power.

The DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge started two weeks ago. And donations have more than doubled since last week.

At $7,970 from 23 donors reaching 674 students, BoomTown is now in the No. 1 spot.

(Take that, Fred Wilson!)

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

You better, as you will see from the Swisher boys’ video here:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081015/ay-chihuahua-a-donorschooseorg-threat-from-my-kids/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081007/a-donorschoose-high-school-musical-a-very-awkward-dance-for-the-kids/ http://allthingsd.com/20081007/a-donorschoose-high-school-musical-a-very-awkward-dance-for-the-kids/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:38:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=4894

It’s been just a week, and BoomTown is rocking out in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

It started a week ago, with us featuring a video from my hell-froze-over dinner with Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang, who ably endured a meal with me in support of the kids who benefit from the unique charity.

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

Last year, BoomTown did pretty well, raising $12,199 from 52 donors and impacting 1,940 students.

This year, just a week in, we are already at $3,617, from nine donors and impacting 348 students. That puts BoomTown in the No. 2 spot behind our archrival VC Fred Wilson (he is at $5,877).

That’s great, but I have a long list of technology requests in high-need public schools, so we need to get cracking.

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

To get you inspired, the fine folks at JibJab sent me this deeply embarrassing video of me and Yang (well, our heads, actually) dropped into a promotional video for “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” which opens Oct. 24.

It’s painful to watch (most especially, Yang in a dress as Gabrielle), but it’s for the kids!

Also, there is no telling what low level of pandering–next week, for example, I plan on press-ganging my kids to help out–I am capable of to raise the money.

Here’s the video as proof:

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081007/a-donorschoose-high-school-musical-a-very-awkward-dance-for-the-kids/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20081001/a-donorschooseorg-miracle-my-dinner-with-jerry-and-boomtown-plans-to-vanquish-the-naked-scoble/ http://allthingsd.com/20081001/a-donorschooseorg-miracle-my-dinner-with-jerry-and-boomtown-plans-to-vanquish-the-naked-scoble/#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:35:50 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=4656

If it’s Oct. 1, it must be time for the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

Last year, BoomTown did pretty well, raising $12,199 from 52 donors and impacting 1,940 students.

But Tomato Nation’s Sarah Bunting ran away with the overall competition by raising more than $100,000 from almost 1,100 donors, mostly by promising to dress up like a giant tomato.

In the tech arena, venture capitalist Fred Wilson beat me–despite my best efforts, including the use of BoomTown’s progeny as props in shameless videos over the course of the competition–by raising $18,538 from 92 donors.

Both Bunting and Wilson were awarded lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, the prize his company offered to the bloggers who garnered the biggest number of donors.

Since Yang was not talking to me last year, part of Yahoo’s crackerjack cave-dwelling press policy at the time, I tried but failed to capture the coveted lunch, so I could get a little time with the reluctant-to-speak exec.

But we do not give up at AllThingsD: The Yang pursuit lasted all year long. He finally relented in late May, after I cornered him onstage at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference and forced him to promise in front of an audience of more than 600 to have a lovely grilled cheese with me.

Yang’s price? That I donate $500 to DonorsChoose.org.

Thus, a deal was struck and, better yet, we ended up having a lovely dinner at John Bentley’s in Woodside two weeks ago.

Now I am back without an insane obsession, although I have my best begging tools at the ready–now both my kids can talk–and a long list of technology requests in high-need public schools.

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

Time is of the essence! In the tech blogger space, Wilson is already up to his nefarious VC tricks. Worse still, the very sneaky Robert Scoble has entered the contest too.

I simply cannot get bested by a clown like Scoble, now can I?

(I mean, really, take a long gander at the frequently nude dude pictured here!)

I think I have just found my 2008 inspiration! Game on, naked boy!

Seriously, start giving until it hurts and then give more or I am in danger of being Scobleized.

Until then, here is a special video message from Yang himself, proof that determination and obnoxiousness always prevail:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081001/a-donorschooseorg-miracle-my-dinner-with-jerry-and-boomtown-plans-to-vanquish-the-naked-scoble/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20071214/holiday-giving-an-online-guide/ http://allthingsd.com/20071214/holiday-giving-an-online-guide/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:01:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071214/holiday-giving-an-online-guide/ Don’t miss this Wall Street Journal story on finding charity information on the Web as you are contemplating your annual giving.

Money quote: “Over the past couple of years, the nonprofit watchdogs that help donors have added more information to their sites, and they’ve increased the number of organizations they follow. Moreover, information about thousands of charities–including Internal Revenue Service returns and governance details–is now available free on the Web.”

See this chart below for some information on charity watchdog groups (click on the image to make it bigger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071214/holiday-giving-an-online-guide/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20071106/jerrys-lunch-partners-boomtown-not-invited/ http://allthingsd.com/20071106/jerrys-lunch-partners-boomtown-not-invited/#comments Tue, 06 Nov 2007 07:01:26 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071106/jerrys-lunch-partners-boomtown-not-invited/ Big prolonged sigh.

We tried but failed to capture the coveted lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, which was part of the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org.

Major lunchroom snub!

Tomato Nation’s Sarah Bunting ran away with the overall competition by raising more than $100,000 from almost 1,100 donors and promising to dress up like a giant tomato (a genius move that should have occurred to us!).

In the tech arena, VC Fred Wilson bested us–despite our best efforts that included the use of BoomTown’s progeny as props in shameless videos over the course of the competition–by raising $18,538 from 92 donors.

Still, we were second in the money category with $12,199 from 52 donors, impacting 1,940 students.

According to Yahoo’s blog Yodel Anecdotal, both Bunting and Wilson will be awarded lunch with Yang (he only had to have it with Bunting, but our aggressive efforts in the tech area inspired Yahoo to offer lunch to Wilson too, pretty much because he is not us!). Why this very lively corporate blog has such a goofy name shall be a topic for another day.

To recap: DonorsChoose.org funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors. (AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.)

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also had hoped to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang!

Lunch or not, we’re thrilled our hunger spurred more giving to needy kids.

So we’ll be leaving up our page there for you to keep giving. Click to go to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give! There are still 11 projects that need funding, so give, you overpaid techies!

And, Jerry, we still aren’t done with you yet! BoomTown likes to have a bite, as you know, and we shall have our meal in the Yahoo cafeteria one way or another!

Chomp.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071106/jerrys-lunch-partners-boomtown-not-invited/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20071024/day-99-the-swisher-boys-are-back-and-theres-going-to-be-trouble-if-mom-doesnt-get-lunch-with-jerry-yang/ http://allthingsd.com/20071024/day-99-the-swisher-boys-are-back-and-theres-going-to-be-trouble-if-mom-doesnt-get-lunch-with-jerry-yang/#comments Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:08:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071024/day-99-the-swisher-boys-are-back-and-theres-going-to-be-trouble-if-mom-doesnt-get-lunch-with-jerry-yang/ Can you believe it? DAY 99!

Yes, this is the day before the last full day of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s 100-day No-Sacred-Cows Vision Quest, which BoomTown has been keeping relentless track of, ever since he told investors in the summer that he was undertaking a top-to-bottom look at his troubled company and that all holy bovines had better watch out.

So far though, in terms of truly dramatic change, it’s Cows: 99, Yang: 0.

Sure, Yahoo has done some acquiring, like the $350 million purchase of emailer Zimbra; it has dumped some tiny products (music stuff, for example); there have been more management reorgs and departures (the latest being marketing head Cammie Dunaway, news of which we broke here); and recent third-quarter earnings have been touted as they-weren’t-as-bad-as-we-thought-they-would-be, which does not exactly set one’s hair on fire.

But no massive cuts, no major management upheavals, no drastic shift in business, no game-changing purchases and no being acquired either.

Then again, there’s still one more day to go!

For Yang, it seems, time flies when you’re not having fun.

At a recent gathering related to Yahoo’s Right Media acquisition, he noted: “It is a lonely job in the sense that you have to make some of the tough calls.”

Did he say lonely? Does he not know yet that BoomTown is at the ready to assuage Yang’s ennui and have a lively lunch, if only he would emerge from the cave he has been living in?

Plus, kids could benefit, if you help BoomTown in the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org.

So, click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!

The charity funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors. (AllThingsD.com picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.)

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also hope to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the tech blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with Yang!

So far, we’ve raised $12,291 from 49 donors, putting us second behind VC Fred Wilson in the tech sector.

So go now to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give early and often!

Not convinced by me? Then listen to my persuasive sons, who tout the charity again (here is their last appearance, engineered by their shameless mother).

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071024/day-99-the-swisher-boys-are-back-and-theres-going-to-be-trouble-if-mom-doesnt-get-lunch-with-jerry-yang/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20071016/donorschooseorg-click-here-and-here-and-here-and-here/ http://allthingsd.com/20071016/donorschooseorg-click-here-and-here-and-here-and-here/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:01:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20071016/donorschooseorg-click-here-and-here-and-here-and-here/ OK, we’re going to cut to the chase.

Give here to DonorsChoose.org.

We’re now at $12,056 with 44 donors and solidly in the No. 2 slot, with VC Fred Wilson still king of our little tech charity mountain.

Let’s knock him off!

So go now and click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here or use the thermometer on the left side of this page to give early and often!

Why click here?

Because it is well and good to help help BoomTown in the October Tech Blogger Challenge for DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

(AllThingsD picked tech projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C.)

Besides raising funds for kids who need it, we also hope to win an award Yahoo is sponsoring for the tech blogger who garners the biggest number of donors–a free lunch with CEO Jerry Yang, who remains as grumpy as ever toward his old pal at BoomTown.

Soften him up with love, sweet love and give now!

So, remember to click on through to our AllThingsD page on DonorsChoose.org here to give early and often!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071016/donorschooseorg-click-here-and-here-and-here-and-here/feed/ 0