Politics, the environment, technology, activism. And stuff.
Posted in General on Jan 12th, 2010
After some soul-searching, and a prod from my dear friend and inspiration role model Sam Dorman, I’ve decided to unplug myself from “web 2.0,” “the social nets” or whatever we call the rapidly-expanding tarpit of social networking sites these days. Long story short: I’m increasingly convinced that the constant stream of tweets, status updates, Facebook wall [...]
Posted in General on Jul 15th, 2009
Here’s a nice little online engagement tactic from our friends at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families: when you build a “thank you” page for online donations or online activism, include Facebook Connect widget that invites people to become a Fan of your org. Nicely done!
Posted in General on Jan 26th, 2008
New research suggests the Malcom Gladwell-popularized theory of “Influentials” (or Gatekeepers) doesn’t hold water. Really interesting article in FastCompany about research Duncan Watts: Watts, for one, didn’t think the gatekeeper model was true. It certainly didn’t match what he’d found studying networks. So he decided to test it in the real world by remounting the [...]
Posted in General on Dec 4th, 2007
Those of you who missed our recent event “Online Social Networks: Can They Power Social Change” missed a good time and a packed house with a ton of energy and enthusiasm. Fortunately, we got a decent video of our eight 5-minute presentations, which you can watch online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh3hlU97_wo Warning: the video’s just under an hour, so grab [...]
Posted in General on Dec 3rd, 2007
Michael Gilbert picks up on an important piece: How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not Electronic A couple of key ‘grafs: The network-centric approach had worked pretty much as advertised. Even the theory’s many critics admit net-centric combat helped make an already imposing American military even more effective [...]
Posted in General on Nov 30th, 2007
Science fiction writer and commentator Cory Doctorow thinks Facebook is just as doomed as its predecessors: Keeping track of our social relationships is a serious piece of work that runs a heavy cognitive load. It’s natural to seek out some neural prosthesis for assistance in this chore. My fiancee once proposed a “social scheduling” application [...]
Posted in General on Nov 18th, 2007
Beth’s note about a tool for posting photos from Flickr to Facebook, and that tool’s lack of support for Creative Commons licensing got me thinking (and researching) Facebook’s terms of service. The news is not good. Facebook’s Terms of Use state: By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you [...]
Posted in General on Nov 15th, 2007
Right this very minute, ONE/Northwest is hosting a “brain trust” event where 60+ people are gathered to talk about online social networks and their potential for powering social change. Here’s a liveblog of my notes: Gideon Rosenblatt, ONE/Northwest (http://www.onenw.org) Executive Director We are a capacity builder that helps environmental groups engage people in environmental protection. Thanks to Aron Thompson, [...]
Posted in General on Nov 2nd, 2007
… it were possible to include the contents of an RSS feed in the group. This would make it possible to stream content from a group’s website to their Facebook group space, no extra software needed. For example, I would really like to be able to embed the RSS feed from http://www.onenw.org/news-events in ONE/Northwest’s Facebook group page. [...]