single Category Archives social media

When I first worked managing reader comments at NYTimes.com, the news was the subject and the comments were the reaction. But tools like Epinions and Blogger flipped the world so that the reactions became the substance. This made Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire and also led Time magazine to declare "You" the Person of the Year in 2006.

It also heralded the slow (or maybe not so slow) degradation of the line between fact and feeling in the public square. What started as inclusion—or "presence" as we called it around 1999 when we marveled that you could turn on the houselights and let the audience see each other—became disregulation, entitlement and, worst of all, another vector for the powerful to manipulate the consumers.

"Digital Forest" - MobLab

This post by Julien Burns comes from Greenpeace’s Mobilisation Lab, a longtime participant in the TABridge network. The “MobLab” functions as a testing ground and “forward-looking space” to help Greenpeace’s global network and it allies understand and pilot “people-powered” campaigning, online and off.

“I am not saying ignore what’s working for large organizations,” writes ActionSprout CEO Drew Bernard, “they often provide great inspiration. But don’t mistake what they are doing as a path to success.” His email came in response to a call for help I sent out to a brain trust of progressive digital advocacy wonks. After watching countless small nonprofits struggle to establish digital presences, I was losing faith that organizations with at most a handful of communications staff working across all media could compete.

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