Archive for the ‘OnlineCommunity’ Category

This is what I like to call “non point source information.” According to the latest survey from the Pew Internet and American Life project, more than 9 out of 10 Americans “graze” on news from multiple sources throughout the day.

The internet is now the third most-popular news platform, behind local and national television news and ahead of national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio.

Almost as important, about 3/4 of online news consumers use email and social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to forward links around to their friends, family, and coworkers.

Expect this basic trend to continue for the foreseeable future.

I thought this mashup of Big Brother and traditional journalism was silly at first, but upon reflection, it’s actually an important experiment. MSNBC is reporting the following:

Five journalists plan to lock themselves away in a French farmhouse with access only to Facebook and Twitter to test the quality of news from the social networking and micro-blogging sites.

It will interesting to see if these journalists shed light on the future of environmental writing and journalism.

Click the link below to see the full story:
Reporters put Twitter, Facebook to ‘Big Brother’ test

Here’s another “we’ll share our corporate profits with the nonprofit that gets the most votes” kind of thing. This time, I voted for the Potomac Riverkeeper — because they asked me to. You need to have a lot of Facebook friends, twitter followers, and email subscribers to have any chance of winning these things, so start recruiting!

And click on the image to vote for Potomac Riverkeeper, too!

Creating Successful Petitions on Change.org from Benjamin Rattray on Vimeo.

Those do-gooder techie types over at Change.org have launched a free online petition tool. This makes it possible for people like you to easily create a petition to a local official, and then use email, Facebook, Twitter, and other channels to urge people to sign it. If you don’t have the capability to host a petition on your own website, this might be a good option for you.

Conventional wisdom on this subject is that the more online petitions like this an official receives, the less attention they pay to them. I accept that — but  many local officials have yet to receive their first online petition, and they will presumably quite a bit of attention to the first one. So it might as well come from you!

Also, petitions are great ways to capture email addresses and help your supporters feel involved in your work. It’s an opportunity to identify who might be willing to take the next, more meaningful step. For example, some of the people who sign your petition might be willing to come along and provide moral support next time you visit that official in person.