First, a disclaimer: My brother and I have been involved with this project for a couple months. I am promoting it to the DoubleSpeak community because I really believe in it and I think that the more users we can get, the more good we can do for the world. If you have any questions or need more information, please send a message to DoubleSpeak.

Facebook is a really interesting and innovative social networking site. With a community of over 20 million people, it is not the largest social networking site around, but I believe it offers some functionality that is unique and that sets it apart from other sites, like Friendster and MySpace. If you want to learn more about Facebook, you can read about it here.

Facebook recently launched the Facebook Platform, a set of tools to allow outside companies, organizations, and developers to create applications on the Facebook system that are made available to the entire 20+ million users in the Facebook community. Facebook is doing this, in part, to compete with the functionality of MySpace, but also because Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has a grand scheme in mind whereby any and all Facebook users can have an entirely unique and specially tailored online identity, all stemming from the Facebook platform. When this new functionality launched, Facebook included 85 launch partners, who offered a wide range of innovative and interesting profile add-ons like widgets, games, music programs, non-profit donation tools, YouTube skins, horoscopes, picture and video software and many more.

One of the applications is called Causes.

This application allows Facebook users the ability to start causes and raise money for them - anything from saving Darfur, to helping end poverty, to controlling the pet population, to stopping the clubbing of baby seals. Once you set up your cause, you pick a beneficiary to receive the money that you and your network raise. Beneficiaries are 501(c)(3) non-profits.

If you are a Facebook user, please add the Causes application to your profile now and start playing around. If you don’t have a Facebook account yet, you can easily set one up. Please note, you do not need to be a college student or a young 20-something to have a Facebook account. It’s available to anyone and many older people have accounts.

Once you’re on Facebook and have added the Causes application, make sure you also check out the DoubleSpeak group, which is nearing 500 members. We want to grow that well into the thousands over the coming months.

Click the picture below to check out the Doublespeak group:

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Senator Craig Thomas and his family.

From AP (via Huffington Post):

Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas, a three-term conservative Republican who stayed clear of the Washington limelight and political catfights, died Monday. He was 74.

The senator’s family issued a statement saying he died Monday evening at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. He had been receiving chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia.

Rest in peace, Senator.