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For social use, unless you’re a hardened stalker, you don’t go approaching or messaging people on Facebook who you don’t already know. It’s all about communicating with those you do. Or a frantic pursuit of collecting people you've had the vaguest connection to, anyway – could we win gold in this?

For business though I want to contact people I haven’t met or who won’t remember me. I want to introduce myself, tell them what I do and see if there’s a way we can work together. However, the only way to do this is to cold message and, well, it all feels a little intrusive.

I know Facebook isn't a business network but there's some damn useful people on there, some of whom happily use it for business. Some don't, though - so how do you tell?

Do you mind being messaged cold? Or should business talk be kept to business networking sites?

It’s arguably the biggest challenge of web 2.0 – how do you start charging for something you’ve so far given away for free?

The almost universal approach to date has been that you don’t; instead you find other revenue streams (usually advertising) that allow you to keep offering the core service without charging.

After all, for social networks and free entertainment sites constantly courting the attention of promiscuous web customers used to getting what they want for free, suddenly charging would be seen as the ultimate turn-off.

It’s a bit different for b-2-b though, where you inevitably expect to pay for any service with real value. That’s not to say, of course, that going from a free model to a paid-for one doesn’t hold its risks: you’re opening yourself up to a competitor offering what you do for free, for a start.

It was interest then that I received the following email when placing a job ad on a site I’d used gratis for several years:

“Matt, the position is now live on our site... It’s also worth letting you know that we have moved to a fee paying structure this year – due to increased traffic on the website and the time required to manage it. I’ve attached a rate card for you to see. Please note that we’re offering two free adverts before we start to charge, so do enjoy another free posting with us. On saying that, we continue to post all internship / work experience positions for free.”

So I’ve now got to pay for a service I got for free. But you know what? Providing I still get value, I don’t really mind.

The site, Gorkana, has earned my respect over the years by providing a great service for free. Its rates introduced also mean it's still more economical than competitors and, once compared to the cost of advertising in a national newspaper or with a recruitment agent, I’m still getting a good deal.

Plus they’re softening the blow by communicating clearly and staggering the process with two more free placements. I.e. they’re continuing to demonstrate the quality of their service before asking me to pay for it.

Time will tell if Gorkana’s got it right or wrong for charging, but for me it feels fair and surely that should the barometer for others to follow when it comes to pricing models?

Brits are pitching their tents and going camping for their summer holidays this summer. Entrepreneurs will be joining in too with September marking the return of last year’s highly-successful Seedcamp, where a more familiar form of pitching will be on the agenda.

The week-long experience will see 20 selected start-ups undergo an intensive investment-readiness programme, with the help of a diverse mentor network of serial entrepreneurs, corporates, product designers, venture capitalists, recruiters, marketing specialists, lawyers and accountants.

At the end of the week, five of the companies will win €50,000 in exchange for a 10% stake. Those five then get the same ecosystem of experts for an extended three-month tutorship which, in addition to more intensive scaling up, includes two investor presentation days.

Organised by Index Partner’s Saul Klein, founder of Video Island and former VP of marketing and e-commerce at Skype, Seedcamp has representatives from Google, Microsoft, NESTA, Cisco and Mizilla on its advisory board.

If you’re an early stage idea and meet Seedcamp’s flexible criteria, you’ve got just under two weeks to apply.

Oh, and don't forget those tentpegs...

Image: Flickr

Smarta found this exclusive preview of the new Moo business cards and couldn't resist sharing.

Founded by Richard Moross, Moo's cool small, image-led business cards offered a fresh approach to the most staid of business stationery.

Brilliant for promoting your business and networking, they've become a badge of the web 2.0 crowd. The second generation look even better and should appeal to a wider audience.

According to the Moo website you can now:

- Use up to 50 different images per pack
- Choose from a range of templates for the reverse
- Upload your logo or image, and select from a new range of fonts and colours
- Choose Moo ‘Green’ 100% recycled, 100% recyclable and bio-degradable paper

And, just as importanly, they're still super value for £10.99 for 50 cards. We'll certainly be ordering ours and are tipping Moo to go on to even greater things.

When I logged onto Facebook this morning I had two invites to join groups outraged at supposed claims the world’s leading social network was set to start charging a monthly subscription fee.

As it was so obviously not true I didn’t bother to join the collective rant. Tempting as it was, neither did I join the conspiracy theorists claiming Mark Zuckerberg et al at Facebook had set up the group to test user reaction to the concept.

A quick Google to double check confirmed but did get me thinking when I stumbled on an interview with Guy Kawasaki, celebrated marketer, VC, blogger and columnist for the US magazine Entrepreneur. He says if he owned Twitter, where he has a huge following, he’d start charging $30 a month to make it better.

Surely we’ve been here before and exhausted the argument? This web 1 rhetoric being applied to web 2.0 experience isn't just archaic it seems almost impossible to make work.

Paid for premium email died overnight when Google launched 1GB’s worth for free. Any value add service Facebook, Twitter or any other site attempted to charge for would simply set competitors, or new entries, scrambling to offer the same for free.

But then they do say all things are cyclical so perhaps subscription isn't as dead as we thought. Maybe the critical mass of Joe Public has more loyalty (or addiction) to Facebook, and possibly Twitter, than web 2.0 gospel has accounted for?

Would you pay to use a social enterprise or access your favourite site? Just as importantly would you consider charging for access/content?

Death by powerpoint might be one of the few things that come to mind when you hear the word ‘conference’. We can add a lot more to the list but that’s not the point of this post. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Take all the things you hate about conferences, turn them around, mash them up, and apparently what you get is an ‘unconference’.

Trendy term or something that reflects a real change in the way events could be conducted? We decided to put the SHINE unconference to the test. SHINE was instigated by four dynamic organisations (Ashoka, UnLtd, School for Social Entrepreneurs, The Hub) and aimed to ‘connect, inform, and inspire people interested in social change’.

The usual suspects of the Social Enterprise world were there in full attendance, accompanied by hundreds of fresh faces with admirable passion for creating positive change in the world and hungry to get the support they need to make their ideas happen.

SHINE certainly passed the test and was successful in breaking down the old conventions. The sessions were varied, informative, and in most cases organised for its attendees to solve problems and create real opportunities. The space used (the Bargehouse on London’s Southbank) broke down barriers and offered an ideal setting to create partnerships and friendships.

Next year’s NESTA conference has a few things to learn from it. Attendees are an event’s most valuable resource and should be the engine that drives it. Less lavishness, higher interaction, and more substance is just what the people are shouting for.

We leave you with our usual video taster of the event...

Stand up Patrick Philpott, MD of SKILL!, a new initiative launching tomorrow to help London school students develop skills in enterprise, networking and communication skills.

SKILL!’s launch event will see 150 students gather on Wednesday 14th May for a day of interactive learning with an impressive line-up of entrepreneurs.

YO! Company founder and former Dragon Simon Woodroffe will share his experiences, while other participators include organiser of the World Entrepreneur Summit and presenter of C4’s ‘Vocation, Vocation, Vocation’ David McQueen, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Make Your Mark with a Tenner Oli Barrett, and Ariadne Capital’s Julie Meyer.

The final speech of the day will come from Patrick himself – and why not?

After all, who better than an 18 year-old (yes, he’s still doing his A-levels) who’s already been mixing it with entrepreneurs for five years and in business for two, to deliver the message that enterprise is for everyone?

For more on SKILL! and tomorrow’s event, visit: http://skill-london.com/wb/

WebMission08 is go! The companies participating in the UK start-up trip to Silicon Valley first discussed here in February jetted out to San Francisco on Saturday for a week of frenzied card swapping with some of the US’ most influential internet names.

Judging by the some of the pics emerging on Facebook and Flickr, Team WebMission spent the opening 24 hours proving us Brits can certainly mix it with our revered friends across the pond… in terms of downing cocktails and partying, that is.

But hey, a bit of 'work hard, play hard' never hurt anyone and reports filtering back across the pond suggest it was certainly back to business first thing today.

Oracle were the group’s host this morning while, depending what time you’re reading this, around now they should be watching craigslist founder Jim Buckmaster interview Bebo’s Michael Birch at a Glasshouse San Francisco event.

Partying tonight isn’t advisable as the group will be making presentations to VCs and US press at Heller Erhman first thing the following morning.

We’ll update you later in the week on their progress and hopefully get a diary report from Peter Ward, co-founder and co-CEO of travel and lifestyle social network WAYN.com (Where Are You Now?), one of the 20 companies on the trip. We’ve also asked trip organiser and Smarta friend Oli Barrett up-to-date with everything as it happens.

In the mean time, check out the full agenda on the WebMission08 site and biogs of the 20 companies lucky enough to make the cut on a trip Oli tells us was very heavily over-subscribed.

Disruptive Social Innovation. What the bleep is it all about?

We headed to The Hub to find out. The Hub is a unique space created for social innovators to work, meet, learn, connect and realise progressive ideas. The energy and dynamism here is truly palpable. This is the place to make things happen, from growing ideas to launching projects to running businesses.

That’s where we met Nick and Menka, the founders of the Disruptive Social Innovators, or Disruptors for short. A team of avid rule breakers who are exploring ways to create and maintain systemic social change.

They’re doing this by organising a monthly open-to-all event in which a bunch of people get together and map out a social, environmental or consumer system, analyze it and invite people who have managed to find ‘disruption points’ within it to explain how they did it. Their aim is to collate, document and share these insights for everyone’s benefit: entrepreneurs, businesses, innovators, funders, policy makers...

The featured topics vary widely. The last two sessions focused on the childcare and packaging markets respectively. The third session (the one we’re bringing to you here) explored the film and distribution market and how a highly unlikely candidate (with zero marketing budget and no big names), managed to break into the mainstream market using radically different tools to become the third highest grossing documentary in US history.

These sessions are open to all and take place on the first Tuesday of every month. All you need to bring is an eager mind and a fiver for nibbles and wine. Pending a website, you’ll be able to join the disruptors on their facebook group.

We leave you with the video highlight of the session. See you at the next one!

Hi there, here is a quick round up of some great networking events coming up in April and May. For many more go to Make Your Mark Connect - a free listings website run by the Make Your Mark campaign to promote and support local networking activity. Enjoy!

Green Shoots: The Perfect Storm - GlassHouse events
Entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett, described by Time Magazine as, one of the key players in putting climate change on the world agenda, will join The Guardian’s Ashley Seager for a fireside chat. Hear Jeremy provide insights to his success as an entrepreneur and the challenges and trends in the sustainable economy. He will also discuss his current work in climate change and peak oil and the implications and opportunities this will have for entrepreneurs and investors.
8 April, London

Stride Out in the Workplace
Are you creative, enterprising and innovative in the workplace? Are you bursting with ideas on how your company could innovate it’s internal systems or external services? Do you know how to manage this energy and present ideas effectively to management, generate buy-in and successfully thrive within the workplace?This event is for professionals who desire to be entrepreneurial in the workplace and wish to know how to present and develop their ideas effectively to management.
9 April, London

“Come to The Diary Room”
Everyone’s got an opinion on Big Brother. What’s yours? At this breakfast briefing, James Bryson and Ross Taylor will show how Qmedia Research has been at the heart of the evolution of the Big Brother brand. They will run through the challenges and methodological advances that have kept the company at the forefront of researching the king of all reality TV shows. With the current series of Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack just finished and the new series of Big Brother 9 around the corner, how can research continue to influence decision making across all strands of the production process?
10 April, Leeds

Creative Juice
Creative companies and individuals based in London are being offered a unique opportunity to develop their business skills, gain a better understanding of how to put their creative skills to the best use of their businesses, and how to maximise the revenue derived from their talents. Dynamo London and Create KX have teamed up to bring an inspirational and practical day for London’s small creative and digital businesses.
15 April, London

Shine: The Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs 2008
Shine: The Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs 2008 will be an event to inform, inspire and connect people in social enterprise. An UnConference is about turning the plodding, predictable business gathering inside out. We are planning one for social entrepreneurs and want it to be made BY social entrepreneurs.
From 9 May, London

The Innovation Edge Conference
NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference is an unrivalled opportunity to get under the skin of innovation in the UK – and consider the impact it will have on our future. The conference brings together a powerful mix of experts from industry, culture, politics and academia. Bob Geldof, Lord Puttnam, Helen Alexander, Michael Birch and urban artist ‘Inkie’ are just a few of those who’ll be fuelling the discussion.
20 May, London

If you are organising an event that you think Make Your Mark Connect should know about then please let us know in the comments or go to www.makeyourmarkconnect.org and add the details there!