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The bar, which users have the option of keeping on their screens, tracks what they do online, letting ForMyCause try to build a business the way content-driven sites do: by asking a premium for advertising through the precise audience-targeting that MyBar allows. Since MyBar also includes easy links to news and information, and because I'm online almost all day, I decided to check it out. The site works like this: A user downloads MyBar -- an inch-wide horizontal strip that spans the screen. It's a quick download, only a couple of minutes with a 56K modem. Once it's installed, what you will see on the bar's left side are links to charities that change every few minutes. ForMyCause lists 22, but you can select others as well. The center of the bar features commercial ads interspersed with charity promotions that also change every minute or so. And finally, on the bar's right, you'll see ForMyCause's "Corporate Sponsors Special Offers." Actually, you won't see it -- not just at the moment, anyway -- because that section is still under construction and clicking on it took me straight back to the Web site. The bar is topped with shortcut tools like Search, News, Shopping, Community, Finance, E-mail, and Calendar. Clicking on Search, for example, produces a pull-down menu with links to major search engines, while News brings up another pull-down with eight categories: travel, world, finance, sports, entertainment, horoscope, health, and weather. The e-mail link takes you to ZDNet's service. Again, it's a great concept, but execution is incomplete. Community and Calendar are "coming soon." GIVE ME FIVE. ForMyCause agrees to donate 50% of net advertising revenues to the charities of your choice, and you can select up to five recipients at once. The more you surf and the more ads you click for information, the more cash you earmark for your selected causes. If a favorite isn't among the current affiliates, the site says it will hold the money until the designated charity comes aboard. What happens to the money if the charity doesn't sign on? Well, it turns out ForMyCause will ask the user to pick an alternate recipient. But that's not clear from a simple reading of the Web site. And there's no written policy on what happens to the money, or the interest, between the time your Web surfing generates the cash and ForMyCause strikes a deal with the charity of your choice. The list of current affiliates also is limited. Easter Seals and March of Dimes are there. And while many others -- like Planned Parenthood, the Environmental Action Defense Network, and the Gay Men's Health Crisis -- are politically liberal, they have few listed counterparts on the right. Another quibble is that some of the listed charities are geographically specific, which may limit their appeal. Similarly, listings like Vermont Adaptive Ski & Sports provide no clues about their good deeds, or any hint why someone who lives in Colorado (like me) should much care. The people behind ForMyCause says they're working to expand their charitable affiliates and that they welcome all charities. But the site itself doesn't say so. ForMyCause's technology is as much a work in progress as its network of recipients. First, my primary Internet service provider is America Online -- but I didn't find out that I could expect problems until I was ready to begin downloading MyBar. AOL is a fact of Web life, so it doesn't seem like a smart move to build a service around a feature that is incompatible with a massive chunk of the potential online audience. Unfortunately, MyBar was no less cumbersome when I used it via my DSL connection. The problem is that bar across the screen, which obliterates whatever is behind it. MATCHING DONATIONS. One nifty feature of ForMyCause is that some "cause-friendly" merchants agree to match whatever donations you generate by giving part of their take from whatever you purchase. But again, the execution is flawed. ForMyCause never tells us how much of the purchase price goes to charity -- and while I later learned that it varies from merchant to merchant, I'm still not clear about who gives how much. ForMyCause promotes itself as the Internet with a heart. If that's the case, it could use a bit of mending -- and clear warnings that major parts of the site are still under construction. As to the screen-blocking MyBar, I'm not sure there's a solution to that dilemma. Perhaps shrinking it, or changing the shape would help, as might the capability to place it anywhere on the screen. For now, while ForMyCause's concept clicks, its execution misses. The site needs to regroup and give a good idea another shot. Marks writes on technology, personal finance, and small-business issues from Denver |
