Methods for encouraging charitable social networking

A method of encouraging charitable donations by individuals who are members of a social network, comprising:

• allowing a user to create a member account by supplying user identity data from the user;
• allowing a user to create a campaign, wherein the created campaign is associated with one or more charities and a financial goal;
• allowing the user to send an invitation to one or more members or non-members;
• allowing the one or more members or non-members to accept or decline the user's invitation, wherein the one or more non-members create a member account in order to accept or decline the user's invitation;
• allowing the one or more members the option to donate any amount of money to a charity to post comments about the user, wherein the monetary value of the donation is associated with the comments posted such that a higher amount donated represents a higher trustworthiness of the comments;
• allowing the one or more members or non-members to support the campaign by donating money to the one or more charities to help reach the financial goal;
• and
• calculating one or more user weight values based at least on a total value of the money donated by the one or more members or non-members, wherein the one or more user weight values represent reliability of a user's reputation.

A method for encouraging charitable donations through a social network, comprising:

• allowing a user of the social network to form a group, wherein the group is associated with a message board;
• allowing the user the option to donate any amount of money to one or more charities to post a message to the group message board;
• allowing one or more members or non-members to the option to donate any amount of money to one or more charities to post a reply to the message;
• and
• calculating one or more user weight values based at least on a total monetary value associated with the posted message and one or more posted replies, wherein the one or more user weight values represent reliability of a user's reputation.

A method for encouraging charitable donations through a social network, comprising:

• allowing a user to create a group, wherein the created group is associated with one or more charities through one or more campaigns;
• allowing the user to send an invitation to one or more members or non-members to join the group and to donate money to one or more charities through the one or more campaigns;
• allowing the one or more invited members or non-members to join the group and to donate money to one or more charities through the one or more campaigns;
• and
• calculating a group weight value based at least on a total monetary value of money donated to the one or more charities through the one or more campaigns by all of the members or non-members of the group.

A method for encouraging charitable donations through a social network, comprising:

• allowing a user to create a group, wherein the created group is associated with one or more charities through one or more campaigns;
• allowing one or more members or non-members to join the group and to donate money to one or more charities through the one or more campaigns;
• and
• calculating a group weight value based at least on a total monetary value of money donated to the one or more charities through the one or more campaigns by all of the members or non-members of the group.

A method for encouraging charitable donations through a social network, comprising:

• providing an online social network for users to obtain information about other users;
• allowing a user to become a member of the online social network;
• allowing the user to create a user profile containing information about the user;
• allowing one or more different users of the online social network to view the user profile;
• allowing one or more institutions to verify the information about the user contained in the user profile;
• calculating an entity weight value for the institution based on a number of times that the institution has verified user information, whereby a higher entity weight value indicates a higher reliability of the institution.