Twitter operas and spudly ducklings | Weekly Roundup

• As you may have heard, Facebook acquired FriendFeed this week. What’s FriendFeed, you ask, and why does it matter? Get up to speed with this handy primer on how to use the social sharing service.
• The Royal Opera House has decided to write a new opera, with a storyline created entirely from suggestions sent in by their online community using Twitter. An interesting example of the possibilities (or perhaps the limitations; time will tell) of both Twitter as a tool and crowdsourcing as an opportunity to get people involved. Beth Kanter also shares some thoughts on the how/when/why of crowdsourcing on her blog this week.
• Wherever you’re communicating, it’s important to keep your audience’s needs and interests in mind. A post on Wild Apricot’s blog reminds that your website needs compelling content–compelling to your site visitors, that is.
• Blogs and tweets are all well and good, but they should be a balanced part of a complete communications strategy, as a post on Rally the Cause points out.
• Have you stopped to think about what your nonprofit is getting out of your social media outreach? eJewish Philanthropy blog poses some questions to ask yourself when trying to anticipate and measure the return your nonprofit expects from its social media investments.
• A small boy in the UK has unearthed a potato that looks just like a rubber duck! Okay, this has nothing to do with nonprofits or communications, but it’s about ducks, so I figure it’s fair game.

A weekly roundup of interesting reads from the online world of nonprofit communications. Check out my Delicious bookmarks for more noteworthy links.