Will Twollars Take Off?
Written by Bianca Bosker on Monday, June 29th, 2009
Filed under Network technology, Synthesis ( Leave a comment - )
The advent of Twollars earlier this year offers the social sector another reason to take note of social media.
Twollars is a Twitter-based currency that combines two key trends shaping the social sector: the power of social media and the economy of micropayments. Conceived by two social media users (who, in true Working Wikily fashion, met via Twitter), Twollars, called the “currency of appreciation”, was designed as a way of rewarding positive action—a “thank you” that “could last beyond the brief act of saying thanks.” Twitter users, who are each allocated 50 Twollars, can award the virtual currency to other Twitterites—as a way of acknowledging them for posting helpful information, sharing a funny video, or writing something inspiring. › Continue reading
Does participating in social media make you a digital socialist?
Written by Noah Flower on Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Filed under Network theory, Networks in action, Synthesis ( Leave a comment - )
“When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it’s not unreasonable to call that socialism… In the past, constructing an organization that exploited hierarchy yet maximized collectivism was nearly impossible. Now digital networking provides the necessary infrastructure.” – Kevin Kelly
Participating in social media is a means to more than just marketing success, contends tech visionary Kevin Kelly in a recent Wired Magazine essay. There’s no question that social media is an important path forward in the media revolution. But to participate in online community efforts is also to channel the age-old desire for collective identity and communal effort, the very same desire that fueled political movements in the past. › Continue reading
New links for June 20th
Written by Noah Flower on Saturday, June 20th, 2009
Filed under News ( 1 Comment - )
Twestival Local: Biggest Twitter Fundraising Event in History Returns *Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies *Change native to the digital world *Why Non-Profits Are So Good at Social Media * My Interview in BusinessWeek on Iran’s Twitter Revolution *15 Ways to Measure Return on Engagement (ROE) of Social Media * 8 Nonprofit CEOs Who Tweet › Continue reading
New links for June 18th
Written by Noah Flower on Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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Catalyst for Change: The Impact of Millennials on Organization Culture and Policy * Social Networks for Nonprofits: Why You Should Grow Your Own * Is serious discussion possible in online communities? * Resources to Help Your Nonprofit Group Navigate Online Social Media * Hello, Washington Post: Dolllars Per Facebook Donor Is Not the Right Metric for Success * Nonprofit Social Network Survey Released › Continue reading
Esther Dyson on the big picture of social media
Written by Noah Flower on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
Filed under Network technology, Networks in action, Synthesis ( Leave a comment - )
Several of the tools that kickstarted the revolution we now call “social media” were angel-funded by veteran venture capitalist and technology critic Esther Dyson: flickr, del.icio.us, and MeetUp. In a recent interview with strategy+business she shared her vision of the big picture: a fundamental shift toward more transparent institutions and a more relationship-driven economy. In other words, a world of working wikily. Here is what she has to say on topics relevant to our conversation, and four questions that her points raise for nonprofits: › Continue reading
New links for June 2nd
Written by Noah Flower on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Filed under News ( 2 Comments - )
Headlines: Squarepeg: iphone app manages social actions, posts to twitter, facebook, email, rss * Guest Post: Hillary Clinton on Social Media and Causes * Smithsonian: Crowdsourcing An Institution’s Vision on Youtube * The Twitter Book: Must-Read Book for Simple, Practical Advice * Free the Fail Whale! › Continue reading
New links for May 29th
Written by Noah Flower on Friday, May 29th, 2009
Filed under News ( Leave a comment - )
Headlines: Google Wave: A Complete Guide * Learning as a Network * New resource on leadership networks * Social Yell * Playing For Change | Peace Through Music › Continue reading
Working wikily on mobiles
Written by Aron Kirschner on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Filed under Network technology, Synthesis ( 1 Comment - )
Mobile is one of the fastest growing and most talked about areas of technology. We wrote about it a year ago for our Packard team, and wanted to add more thoughts here. Given the pace of change and the incredible potential that mobile holds, it is worth stepping back and looking at some of the macro trends as well as implications for the social sector. Though we could write an entire post around any one of these trends, this post will focus on broad descriptions:
A few lessons we’re learning about working wikily
Written by Diana Scearce on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
Filed under Synthesis ( 2 Comments - )
I’m working with my colleague, Gabriel Kasper, and others here at the Monitor Institute on a “Working Wikily 2.0” paper that shares our learning to date. In Version 2.0 we focus on what it might mean to work with a network mindset. We include a few lessons we’ve learned along the way in our partnership with the Packard Foundation that we hope can guide others interested in working more wikily. Here they are:
A “Twitter revolution” in Moldova?
Written by Aron Kirschner on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Filed under Network technology, Networks in action, News ( Leave a comment - )
Long before Oprah’s first tweet, WorkingWikily has been covering the Twitter phenomenon.
In previous posts we described how Congress is using Twitter and how TweetsGiving raised a substantial amount of money for charity. Recently, Twitter was featured prominently in international news after it was reportedly used to bring together a “smart mob” of protestors in Moldova. More than 10,000 protestors were brought together using Twitter in combination with other social network tools such as Facebook (see our earlier post on Facebook’s use in Egypt) and Live Journal.
The transformation of media and lessons for the non-profit world
Written by Aron Kirschner on Friday, April 10th, 2009
Filed under News, Synthesis ( 5 Comments - )
Much has been written in the last several months regarding the state of peril that surrounds the print media industry, particularly newspapers. The death of traditional media has been heralded for years, with technological changes decreasing both circulation and advertising. However, America’s economic crisis has greatly accentuated these effects, lowering the rates that advertisers are willing to pay, and increasing the difficulty of raising capital or courting potential buyers for failing newspapers. Publicly traded American newspapers have lost over forty percent of their market value within the last three years, and a number of high profile newspapers have gone out of business with others suffering from cash flow issues and imminent demise. The Rocky Mountain News published its final edition in February, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was forced to discontinue its print edition, and several large newspapers including the San Francisco chronicle and the Chicago Sun-Times have been put on endangered lists.
Social media is growing fast, going global, and growing up
Written by Noah Flower on Monday, March 30th, 2009
Filed under Network technology, News, Synthesis ( 1 Comment - )
Looking over the numbers from this month’s new Nielsen report, social media has clearly hit the global mainstream in the developed world, providing reason to believe that designing engagement around social media is becoming an increasingly normal path. Here are the three key points: › Continue reading
Should nonprofits be crowdsourcing or “smart-sourcing”?
Written by Noah Flower on Friday, March 27th, 2009
Filed under Network tradecraft, News ( 2 Comments - )
As techPresident’s Pete Peterson reports in his piece titled “Government Needs Smart-sourcing, Not Crowdsourcing,” Clay Shirky has changed a few notes of his tune: whereas he previously was advocating for government to use Web 2.0 tools to pay more attention to public opinion writ large, he now believes that it should give greater weight to expert views. Peterson’s post builds on that idea, developing a critique of crowdsourced policy suggestions, along the lines of Cynthia Gibson’s earlier post on the stupidity of crowds: › Continue reading
New links for March 20th
Written by Noah Flower on Friday, March 20th, 2009
Filed under News ( Leave a comment - )
Headlines: Plans for the Economic Crisis * Interview: François Bar, “Mobile Voices” * Prizes Gain in Popularity as Philanthropic Strategy * Crowdsourcing Nonprofit’s Good News « A. Fine Blog * Twitter Jumped the Shark This Week - The Daily Beast * Is IDonateToCharity.org The Next Best Fundrising Idea? * Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (summary and commentary after the break) › Continue reading
What does it really mean to “organize” a netroots campaign?
Written by Noah Flower on Friday, March 13th, 2009
Filed under Network tradecraft, Networks in action, News ( 3 Comments - )
Everyone in politics these days loves to talk about the “netroots,” but hardly anyone really knows what it means to organize a netroots campaign. Enter Apollo Gonzales, the Natural Resource Defense Council’s new netroots campaign manager. The grassroots is easy to picture: they’re the everyday people who are on your mailing list, contribute money so you can lobby Congress, and occasionally call their leaders to voice their opinion. But the netroots is a more abstract concept that Gonzales and a few other pioneering netroots organizers are beginning to learn how to handle. › Continue reading
Data-visualization: seeing is believing
Written by Noah Flower on Sunday, March 8th, 2009
Filed under Network tradecraft, News ( 1 Comment - )
Visualization gets its power from the simple fact that some things are just easier to understand when you can look at them, a fact familiar to anyone who works with networks and maps their connections. The nascent field of data visualization continues to probe for new kinds of information that are easier to relate to as images, and back in December FlowingData posted their list of the five best visualizations from 2008. Look carefully: can you spot the networks? › Continue reading
New links for February 23rd
Written by Noah Flower on Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Filed under News ( 1 Comment - )
Headlines: Same-sex marriage movement looks to ‘Obamify’ * The Digital Activism Survey 2009 * Online Advocacy Guide * Seed Salon: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi + James Fowler (summary and commentary after the break) › Continue reading
McKinsey’s corporate best practices for Web 2.0, with insight for the social sector
Written by Noah Flower on Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Filed under Network tradecraft, News ( 2 Comments - )
Corporate experimentation with Web 2.0 tools is still in its early stages, and many of the lessons that companies are learning can be directly applied to social-sector organizations that operate at a similar scale. A major question has been whether these tools are simply the latest technological fad or whether they can offer significant benefits to an organization’s efficiency and effectiveness. The latest McKinsey article on the topic, “Six ways to make Web 2.0 work,” contends that they absolutely can, › Continue reading
New links for February 19th
Written by Noah Flower on Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Filed under News ( Leave a comment - )
Headlines: A Mobile Phone For Facebook Lovers * Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise * Social Media Saves Lives: Salmonella Outbreak Pushes HHS, FDA, CDC to Get Social * GOP, RSS, and API! Oh My! US Congress Republicans’ New Site (summary and commentary after the break)
Egypt’s Facebook-based opposition: a preview of the power of social networks for organizing
Written by Noah Flower on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Filed under Networks in action, News ( Leave a comment - )
The tragic conflict in Gaza has at least a small silver lining: it’s provided a vibrant example of social networks being used for organizing. Egyptian youth poured their hearts out on Facebook as the conflict unfolded, expressing every variety of rage, and the story of what happened was written up in the New York Times under the headline “Revolution, Facebook Style.” There is enough insightful material in the story that I’ve included a string of key quotes below.
