“There is something even more profound in what has happened to Twitter over the past two years, something that says more about the culture that has embraced and expanded Twitter at such extraordinary speed. Yes, the breakfast-status updates turned out to be more interesting than we thought. But the key development with Twitter is how we’ve jury-rigged the system to do things that its creators never dreamed of.

In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it’s doing to us. It’s what we’re doing to it.” How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live – TIME

Toms Shoes is a company based on a brilliant but simple idea:

“For every pair (of shoes) you purchase, Toms will give a pair of shoes to a child in need.“

This succeeds on a couple of important levels:

1. Every time you wear a pair of Toms Shoes you can feel good about helping others.
2. These are more than ‘just shoes’. If someone else asks you about your Toms Shoes, you can quickly relate a story that possibly compels the other person to buy some Toms for themselves.
3. As such, word of Toms spreads virally (albeit with some help from an AT&T commercial) allowing them to sell more shoes and do more good.

All of this got me thinking… Could you apply the same business model to the world of web design? For every web site we design, could we design a free web site for a non-profit? The proceeds from the commercial site would help fund the non-profit site. The two sites would be linked in much the same way as sister cities.

 photo credit: hnnhlh14