> “If a customer’s email address is attached to three or four social networking sites with 300 friends, the email likely isn’t fake and the retailer can put that person in the ‘good’ pile.”

The guy who sold sex.com had an interesting idea in his Mixergy interview about making loans to young adults by having them pledge their email or Facebook as collateral. For example, if the loan wasn't being repaid, the service would post on your wall using your credentials something like "isn't paying his loan back" Now, in some circles that might be taken as a positive status-enhancing comment but, privacy issues aside, the idea of putting up one's identity as collateral is interesting to me. Some of the more successful real world charities (Team in Training, for example) push you to raise thousands because you have pledged to do an endurance event (usually a marathon) and if you back out - you lose credibility and the more you raise for Team in Training - the more negative incentive to back out. You actually sign a legal contract when you sign up saying that you will either raise the full amount or pay the outstanding balance out of your own pocket - with a loophole that you can back out of the contract in thirty days and just lose your initial several hundred commitment fee. The power of social contracts. Rapleaf understands this well. So does Team in Training. At the extreme, there are cults. At the other end, stuff like being asked to donate money or volunteer at church. I wonder how well a public scorecard of how much money you were donating to charity, CO2 that you were generating would work to increase charitable donations and decrease personal CO2. But I digress