The panel was entitled, "Social Responsibility and Financial Success--Oxymoron?" and featured Scott Hassan of eGroups, Craig Newmark of Craig's List and Pavel Curtis of Placeware, speaking on the challenge of following socially responsible goals in the land of startups. All three organizations are successful, in their own way, and each has its own view of its relation to issues of social responsibility.

eGroups bills itself as "The Easiest Way for Groups to Communicate--free!", and Scott argued that eGroups is providing the socially worthwhile service of "free speech". Starting with emailing lists some years ago, the service now offers a range of web-accessible tools to share information and coordinate activities in groups. At one point, they believe that eGroups was the only channel of communication out of Kosovo. At the same time, hate groups have the same access to eGroups, and the company does not attempt to censor communications. Questions for Scott mainly had to do with the ethics of advertising: eGroups makes money with banner ads.

Craig's List is a popularsite for posting Bay Area job, housing and other information, and has its origins in Craig's grassroots vision of people "giving each other a break". Craig's List has remained non-commercial despite some controversy triggered by the use of the site's former url by a commercial site with similar services. Craig's goals have been non-commercial and remain that way--in fact, Craig's List generates some revenue from job postings, and the group gives a share to local nonprofits.

Pavel Curtis, along with the other founders of Placeware, gives yet another view of the issues. He started out with social goals connected to making the internet a place to communicate. But the exigencies of running a business required that the Placeware team redirect their interests, not to what is technically or socially most visionary, but what Fortune 500 companies and other organizations will pay for. Currently, this means that Placeware provides web seminar capability, and their clients include organizations that Pavel did not have in his original vision.

What's inside...