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May
15

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How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet – Gizmodo


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via gizmodo.com

This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.

Read the whole story on Gizmodo

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Aug
18

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6 lessons to take away from Jumo’s fail


It is a shame that a social media platform about making positive change went down like a lead balloon, especially when you had very clever people behind it.   Read  FB Co-Founder Sells Jumo for $0 and a Job

For me, Jumo always had a bit of a ghost town feeling about it and if you add that to the initial restrictions in updating a NGO profile, it didn’t encourage me (and many others)  to go out of my way to put my organisations content on the site or to use it.

IHere are six lessons that I took away from Jumo’s fail.

1. Be very clear that the problem you are trying to solve exists.
Did the NGO sector actually want a specialised social media platform? If they did what did NGOs want from it?

2. Make sure you include your potential audiences and key users in the site design process.
Did the design and functionality work for NGOs or give reasons for their supporters to use Jumo over other sites like Care2 or change.org?

3. Be focused on who your target audience is and be knowledgeable about them.
Was Jumo ever clear if they were focused on only US market or a more international audience? Or, did they really understand why people support organisations or causes and what they like to do online?

4. Have more open, two-way conversation with the key drivers of content for your site.
Did Jumo have or seek a “Critical Friend”  via advisorary board of NGOs or from well respected people in the US and International  NGO or campaigning sectors?

5. Ask permission before you use organisations name and content.
It seemed that Jumo staff scraped/wrote content and set up profiles of NGOs for Jumo’s launch without asking permissions of those NGOs or checking if the information was correct.  Not a great way to get a key user base on side with your product.

6. Let Profile owners change/have control their content from the outset.
Organisations that found themselves with a profile on Jumo at the launch where not able to remove, add or update content and the process of contacting someone from Jumo was difficult. Again, not a great way to get a key user base on side with your product.

Do you agree with the lessons I took away form Jumo’s fail or  have anymore to add from Jumo’s and other social good start-ups.




Oct
20

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Will the revolution be tweeted? Whatever….Twitter saves lives


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Manila – Police evacuate an elderly couple from a flooded section of suburban Pasig city east of Manila on 28 September 2009 © Jason Gutierrez/IRIN

I’ve followed the debates over Gladwell’s cockeyed and inaccurate view of of social media with interest. In my day job as a campaigner on humanitarian issues I’ve come across many examples of the use of Ushahidi both as a tool to raise the profile of forgotten conflicts and also a tool to help organise humanitarian response. But so far the evidence on how social networks can work as an early warning mechanism has been a bit patchy.

However the UN’s IRIN News service reports that in the run up to Typhoon Megi in the Philippines the Red Cross used Twitter, Facebook and text messaging to promote awareness of the impending landfall and threat of the typhoon:

Aid officials in the Philippines have credited social media sites like Facebook and Twitter with keeping the number of deaths caused by Typhoon Megi to only 10 so far. Thousands of people were persuaded to move to safer places or take precautionary measures before Megi struck on 18 October, officials say.

“The value of the alerts to us was that we managed to send out the message early,” Alexander Rosete, a spokesman for the Philippines National Red Cross, told IRIN. “Now that we are using the Internet, the services are free of charge, and we send messages at no cost to us. It’s also more reliable and faster because nearly everyone’s on social networking sites.”

(Original report on IRIN)

The Philippines has extremely high levels of text messaging and people using social networks so this may have been an example of using the right tools in the right context. But it does demonstrate the power providing early warning to people who are connected. The revolution may or may not be tweeted, but it seems that Twitter, Facebook and SMS can in fact save lives. Could someone let Gladwell know? Thanks.

Do you have any other examples of where social networking and mobile technology have been useful tools for saving lives?




Sep
14

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Sneak Peak of the UN Digital Media Lounge Schedule


With just one week to go until the UN Week Digital Media Lounge (September 21st – 24th), we’re proud to offer you  a sneak peak at what will

be happening when people get together at the 92Y (that’s 92nd street and Lexington Avenue in NYC). The organisers have pulled together a phenomenal agenda that includes informal conversations, expert briefings, opportunities for full-access Q&A, and real talk with musicians, celebrities, and people from the ground around the world to inspire and challenge you and your communities.

Some highlights from the program include:

Check out the full draft program on the link below.

UN Week Digital Media Lounge Schedule

And finally, if you haven’t registered yet for will be a truly unique blogging experience, get on it now!




Sep
7

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The Best TED Talks To Make Use Of Social Media


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dia/”>MakeUseOf.com has done us all a favor by plowing through the incredible library of TED Talks and made a selection of their top 10 talks on how to make use of social media.

The Best TED Talks To Make Use Of Social Media.

The opportunities are endless for global conversations to help solve global problems, but as Ethan Zucherman points out one of the biggest challenges facing social media is fighting the human urge to flock with people who are similar to ourselves.

Ethan Zucherman, Listen to Global Voices

While this is a great list, it is far from exhaustive. The fact that all speakers are men is just one indicator that our friends at MakeUseOf.com are missing out on some important perspectives on how to best use Social Media.

So, the challenge is yours – What are your favorite videos on the topic?




Jun
8

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Apps from the Personal Democracy Forum


The hope and promise of technology to improve governance was on display at last week’s Personal Democracy Forum 2010. So too were the technologies created to make those hopes a reality. Some were not yet in beta, others had been in use for over a year; some had official presentations, others were mentioned as asides. Here is a rundown of the applications that were discussed.

Mobilization

Frontline SMS
Cited in the “Digital Divide” panel, Frontline SMS was described as “mobile phones to save the world, used for sending pictures of diseases to doctors far away…”

From the site: FrontlineSMS is the complete text messaging solution for the non-profit sector.  FrontlineSMS turns a laptop – or desktop – computer and a mobile phone or modem into a two-way group messaging hub. Since it works anywhere there’s a mobile signal, it doesn’t need the Internet, a major advantage for many grassroots NGOs. Once you have the software running on your computer, you can send messages to wide groups of people, and collect responses to any questions or surveys you might want to run, all via text message.

Meetup Everywhere

Lets people schedule associated Meetups all over the world for free. Create a topic you’d like to meet up about, and everyone else around the world can either join you or schedule their own Meetup on that topic. Message boards and tweets allow you to discuss scheduling with other interested parties. Examples:

HuffPost Green's Meetup Everywhere

Huff Post Green fans scheduled 329 Meetups all over the world to brainstorm ideas for fixing the BP oil spill

  • HuffPostGreen – 329 Meetups around the country have been scheduled to brainstorm ideas for fixing the BP oil spill June 8, after the Huffington Post putu up the idea on Meetup Everywhere.
  • Shakira – Fans have organized 89 flash mobs around the world to dance Shakira’s Waka Waka dance in support of 1GOAL: Education for All.
  • NY Road Runners – 61 groups in 5 continents are using Meetup Everythere to find each other and train together before coming to NYC for the Marathon.

Civic participation

SeeClickFix
Citizens around the world report non-emergency issues; civil servants who monitor the feed can get them fixed. You can even generate a widget showing unresolved issues, enabling you or your site visitors to monitor your municipality’s progress. Government, media, and community groups can set up their own pages to monitor problems being reported (and resolved) within their purview.

Hope+
A platform, incubated by Aspen Institute, for bringing together volunteers and the NGOs who need them. Its partnership with Monster.com is expected to drive more than 32 million volunteers to the site. The thinking is that, once you volunteer you’re hooked. The funnel of participation they envision goes like this:

  1. Your time
  2. Your friends
  3. Your money

IfWeRanTheWorld
Website (in alpha phase) that asks visitors what they’d do if they ran the world, then takes their answers and translates them into “tangible, do-able microactions that anyone and everyone can do”– sort of like making a project plan out of a mission statement.

Piryx
The Piryx “The Social Giving Platform” is a platform connecting donors to causes, helping member causes to “develop a more intimate relationship with donors.” Once they get to the website, the average donor conversion rate is 11%, says Tom Serres, CEO and co-founder.

Political engagement

Visible Vote

Visible Vote lets people see how well their elected officials match their own values.

Visible Vote

From the site: Visible Vote is the first and only application to allow you to cast your virtual vote and then notify your representatives of your position weekly. Visible Vote also monitors how often your Congressmen vote in alignment with you and the people they represent.

Microsoft TownHall
In Microsoft’s words, its free Townhall is “software that allows you to easily create a destination for folks to voice opinions, identify problems, offer solutions and come together around common interests and concerns.” It lets people express their opinions and organizations collect data about them.

10 Questions
Citizens post questions they want their political candidates to answer, and vote up or down the importance of all submitted questions are to them. Candidates then have the chance to answer posted questions via text or video. Only Ohio and Pennsylvania are active in this early stage.

VoteIQ
U.S.- based social network platform for all things politics. Citizens can find the candidates who align with their views and values, see where they really stand on the issues, learn more about the issues, and discuss with others like themselves. Politicians and organizations can reach voters highly targeted because of the information they’ve entered in the system.

Video engagement

Civico

Civicovideo streams events for remote viewing and archiving, including concurrent social media feeds, supplemental documents, and indexing.

Civico
London-based Civico covered and archived the event. The firm video streams events for remote viewing and archiving. According to the site it offers these features:

  • Fully contextualized and indexed with speaker names, agenda items and auto jump points.
  • Access documents, presentations, pictures or data relevant to the meeting
  • Integration with social media platforms (e.g. Twitter), everyday web-based tools, feedback forums, questions, polls, surveys and consultations.
  • Measured audience and engagement statistics

Watchitoo
Combines video chat with video watching so users can watch content together and talk about it.

Campaign tools

Election Mall + Campaign Cloud
Allows campaigns to apply everything Obama did in one place: website, fundraising, organization tools, email, phone, ads, tasking, calendars, GOTV. Pay-for-use model, so it’s meant to be affordable to candidates from the local level to President. For use in U.S. and international campaigns, candidate and issue advocacy. Open API so long as you use the Microsoft Cloud, so it can work with Drupal or other environments.

Pop Rule
Platform for creating a campaign website for as little as $1,000. Pulls together the candidate’s social media feeds, making the campaign distributable. Andy Pariser, reviewing the idea, said it was a good idea for statewide office where money was more scarce; not enough customizability or innovation for a major campaign.

Data

Sunlight Foundation’s Transparency Data Tool
Working with the Center for Responsive Politics and Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Sunlight Foundation has combined several disparate databases and made them available via API to developers seeking to explore relationships between fundraising, lobbying, and elected officials, for example. Non-technical people can access the data with the organization’s Transparency Data tool and download it for investigation or create widgets from it for visual distribution. Some Poliwidgets can be viewed on OpenSecrets.org.

Web Seer
Compare Google Suggest results to discover trends, and visualize that data in new ways. Try it live here.

Were additional apps mentioned in the panels you attended? Let me know of any I missed, below.




May
10

1 Comment

FourSquare has over 40 million checkins


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Location based social network Foursquare counted their 40 millionth checkin according to a tweet from one of their developers.

Foursquare’s growth rate is also accelerating.  According to Pete Cashmore over at Mashable:

The number shows that Foursquare’s growth rate is accelerating: Five weeks ago, the company announced that the total number of checkins had reached 22 million. In short: Foursquare appears to have doubled its checkin rate in just over a month. -Mashable

The internets rumor mill is also a buzz about Facebook’s potential foray into the location based market with their own product.  Nobody knows for certain if they will develop their own location check-in product or integrate with Foursqare and Gowalla.

What’s clear is that location based services will be a large part of the social media landscape in the coming months, but how can nonprofits begin to use geotagging to benefit our community?  Is this something we should even be spending resources in?

Some of the things we need to think about is the reason why people use and enjoy geotagging.  It sounds simple, but behind many of these features is the basic necessity of people needing interactions.  Interactions become more involved and meaningful the closer the other person is part of your network.  One of the ways that this happens is proximity.  Knowing where your network is at any time can be a powerful tool in increasing your perceived connectivity to your network.

But how can we use this psychology to increase the nonprofit community? We need to use geotagging for more than making a Flickr maps of where people are uploading pictures. I would love to hear your ideas but here are some initial thoughts:

  • Mobile Volunteering – People have shown that they enjoy showing that they are part of nonprofit campaigns (adding badges, causes etc. to their accounts).  Maybe this mentality carries over into the geotagging world where we can show your friends what nonprofit projects you’re involved in.  “Hey i’m volunteering at a food bank at X location, come join me”
  • Twitter (Twitter) advocacy – This can be done from either a local or national level.  If you have a local issue, show a local representative a visual map of how many people are talking about it on twitter.  Sending emails is great but what if you could show a politician a real time map of incoming tweets coming in directly from his district?
  • Geogames – Foursqure became popular because of the game features they used, why can’t we do the same?  Geotag whenever you attend a rally or event, gain points or karma or whatever your community finds valuable.
  • Community mapping – This is something more popular in developing countries but there is no reason why everyone can’t get involved.  Use your phone and location to identify problem areas in your community and force government to fix the problems.

What are some of your geotagging ideas?