Nonprofit organizations are increasing using social media as part of their day-to-day business objectives including for fundraising and marketing, and 2011 will be a milestone year for this sector.

The recent introduction of nonprofit social network Jumo will impact the way social networks are used by nonprofits in 2011, and the changing way consumers donate to organizations will also affect fundraising strategies.

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Facebook is making it easier for people to access its service from their mobile phones. Deals struck with more than 50 mobile carriers in 45 countries will give free access to many features, without any data charges.

This offering, dubbed 0.facebook.com, will likely help Facebook increase its usage in developing countries. Among the countries where people can access the free mobile service are Brazil and India. In Brazil, where Google’s orkut still dominates, Facebook is used by just 2.3% of the population, or 4.2 million monthly active users, according to InsideFacebook.com’s Facebook Global Monitor. In India, just over 9 million people use Facebook, InsideFacebook.com reported.

By contrast, eMarketer estimates that 92.5% of Brazil’s population, or 186 million people, will be mobile subscribers this year, In India, just over one-half of the population, or 604 million people, will subscribe to mobile service in 2010. In China, there will be more mobile Internet users in China in 2010 than the entire population of the US. My colleague Noah Elkin, in his recent “BRIC Mobile” report, writes that Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC nations) have “a high percentage of price-sensitive prepaid users who spend little on mobile services beyond basic voice and text messaging.”

But 0.facebook.com is not solely aimed at developing nations. The free offering is also available from carriers in Austria, Belgium and Finland, among others. And mobile operators in Australia, New Zealand and France are slated to come on board soon.

Overall, eMarketer estimates that there will be 223.4 million mobile social network users worldwide in 2010, representing 4.6% of mobile subscribers and 34% of mobile Internet users.

Facebook has focused most of its attention on growing its computer-based audience. It has more than 100 million mobile users out of a total user base of 400 million-plus. Some believe Facebook will cross 500 million users by June. But with its new mobile service, it has the potential to make its mobile audience grow quickly, too.

For a soon-to-be-published eMarketer report on social commerce, I recently spoke with Tracy Benson, the senior director of interactive marketing & emerging media at Best Buy about her company’s social media initiatives. She discussed some of the complexities around targeting influential customers—people who share their opinions with a large network of followers.

Ms. Benson said that Best Buy knows the profile of its best customers, understands their behavior and recognizes what these shoppers like because it keeps in constant touch with them. What Best Buy doesn’t know is the extent of their influence.

“What we’re trying to learn right now is whether the same person who purchases a lot from us is also one of our best influencers or is there a different path to the influencers. They may not be the best purchaser in terms of quantity or dollars, but they might be influencing 1,000 people in their network who then become the buyers.”

Where Best Buy needs help, according to Ms. Benson, is with data warehousing expertise. It is difficult to analyze the large number of customer comments collected from social media sites on a large scale. The alternative is to manually look at every customer who comments to see which ones post their comments to a large community of friends.

It’s no secret that smartphone users index higher for just about every key mobile activity than those with feature phones. But the growth in social networking usage among smartphone users has been truly eye-popping. According to a recent study from Nielsen, the number of smartphone users engaging in social networking activities shot up 187% from July 2008 to July 2009, nearly tripling from 6.4 to 18.3 million users in total.

What’s even more interesting is that mobile users have begun to display similar
frequency and time spent patterns as those accessing the leading social networks
from their PCs. As I discussed in my “Mobile Users and Usage: It’s Personal” report, marketers, publishers and advertisers alike can get a sense of what tomorrow’s mobile media consumption landscape will look like from today’s smartphone users, and mobile social networkers in particular are on the leading edge.