Web Design Book - Facebook: A force for good?

OK, so we all know Facebook’s a HUGE time waster .. but does it serve any useful purpose?

Cornish Tourist Attraction The Eden Project have come up with an interesting use for the social networking site.

Eden are one of 4 finalists in the The People’s Lottery .. a £50 million fund which gets given away based on a public vote.

Their project, The Edge, aims to show how people living in extreme conditions - for example with little water - survive and to see what the - so called - developed world can learn from them. It’s about people who are literally living on “the edge”.

All well and good .. but what’s that got to do with YOU?

Well, Eden has come up with a novel way of promoting their cause - they’ve written a Facebook application.

In case you don’t use Facebook, applications are little .. well .. applications you can add to Facebook which allow you to do (mostly) pretty pointless but fun stuff like .. erm .. telling people what book you read .. throwing pumpkins at them and .. erm .. keeping them up to date with the latest football scores.

Mostly, they’re good ways to waste a few minutes / hours while you’re meant to be working.

What Eden have done is written an application which simply allows you to tell 20 of your closes Facebook friends about the Edge and encourage them to vote for it online.

In Facebook terms, this is nothing new .. but what makes it interesting is that The Eden Project isn’t a Web 2.0 start up or a geek hoping to make a name for themselves .. it’s the UK’s 3rd most popular tourist attraction (if memory serves me right) and a multi million pound enterprise to boot. They’re main stream.

Expect a Vote Hillary Facebook application in the next few months, if there isn’t one already!

;o)

Voting for the People’s Lottery is taking place online and lasts until 10th December.

Why not check out The Edge and the 3 other candidates and cast your vote for one of them?