Ning has gone a long way since they were featured on the Netsquared blog back in March 2007. Besides offering many more features than they had back then, there are now more than 500,000 social networks on Ning.

We recently got interviewed by the folks at Ning along with the folks from the ASPCA Online Community about our use of their platform in TuDiabetes.com and EsTuDiabetes.com to run our social networks for people touched by diabetes.

read more

Hey Folks, 

NetSquared will be undergoing some scheduled maintenance over the weekend and access to the site may be limited at times. Not to worry, we’ll be back up and running strong by Monday morning for the launch of the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge.

See you then!

The NetSquared Team

 

Here's my contribution to this month's Net2ThinkTank question posed by Amy Sample Ward,

 

"What are the key questions nonprofit orgs should ask to help them determine how to prioritize social media training and experimentation as they do their technology and organization-strengthening planning?"

1. What are the goals you are trying to achieve this year?

2. Which social media tools could possibly help you achieve those goals?

3. If you don't know the answer to #2, ask yourself, where can I get a general overview of social media tools, along with examples of how nonprofits are using them?

read more

Paul Bulenzi (Local Representative for Jinja-Central in Uganda)and Siegfried Woldhek (founder of NABUUR.com) demonstrated together for an audience in the Netherlands of 150 innovation managers how NABUUR works.

Through Skype, Paul Bulenzi raised a question about the shipment of mosquito nets from the US to Uganda. The audience came up with a number of possible solutions by sharing their ideas live and real time.

One of the participants, Fons Sweegers, got in touch with a friend in the Netherlands who has a girlfriend in Uganda. She works for a US company that can probably help with the shipment. Now that's networking!

read more

The following is a shout-out to all of my peeps in the business of online community management / outreach, many of whom have expressed, in one form or another, a moderate sense of terror regarding job stability in the present financial crisis. Considering I am not an economist, and that I have a mere bachelors degree in political science and philosophy from a state university, one might want to take the following with a grain of salt but... I do have a bit of hope regarding the opportunities provided by this somewhat grim economic environment.

read more

We have seen it and heard about it time and again, but the Obama campaign is capitalizing on social media use and setting some great examples for nonprofits and other social change campaigns looking to try something new.  Without any candidate endorsement, we can look at the success the Obama camp has had and try it out in our own work!

Newest in the playbook: iPhone app

On the official Barak Obama website ,supporters can now download and use the Obama iPhone application.  As the site explains, the features include:

read more

The Hub at Kings Cross, in London, UK, is officially opening its doors today.  Social innovators, entrepreneurs, collaborators, nonprofit organizations, and other social good types are already filling it up and taking advantage of the other Hub locations.

Hub Spaces

read more

You aren't going to let each other down.

You all post on the blogs with generosity. You share your ideas and help others with theirs. And when we ask you to vote on the projects, you step up an do it thoughtfully.

Innovations happens where there is desire, need and constraints.

And we know that people who are working to make the world a better place are working from a place of passion. They all -- you all -- see the need and you are still getting up every morning and trying to make change. And that makes for a creative energy that sparks innovation. Innovation happens, not in spite of constraints, but because of them. And it's innovation that can really work.

You need help to make the innovation real.

read more

I am happy to share an early testing release of the NewsCloud Social Media Toolkit with you.

read more

<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/szsezak69e" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>

read more

Change.org has just relaunched its website - an online hub and media network for social issues and collective action.

The new version of the site focuses on the question: what can I do? "If I want to end homelessness, what can I do? If I support gay rights, what can I do?"

The Answer

In Josh Levy's words (Josh is the new Managing Editor):

read more

You can sense the nervousness for fundraisers right now as they watch the stock market flop around like a goldfish on the floor.

And the media pundits aren't helping. There are the Survivalists ("It's the Long Emergency - grab a tin of cat food and head for the hills!"), but also the Pollyannas ("It's business as usual - Capitalism needs to have a heart attack every few years!")

Don't panic! Instead, let's look at a historical example to gain some perspective. In fact, our example will be Ground Zero for the original Wall Street apocalypse: what was it like to fundraise during the Great Depression?

More... 

 

For the last several months I've been involved in a project called RootsWire.  The project was initially started as a means to pull together content from the different blogs and web sites covering the Democratic Convention in Denver.  We are growing (at least conceptually) in scope to be an aggregation and cooperation site for bloggers and hyperlocal sites across the US.

Our intention is to build tools for sharing of content between sites in geographic areas, and to have local editors throughout the country who will build a human-edited daily digest of news generated by grassroots sites and organizations. 

read more

Hi All, 

Last month I wrote about Google Grants.  I also contacted them for a Q&A and, with the awesome facilitation of one Ms. Tamara Micner, I got the interview below with Manage of Google Grants, Mr. Chris Powell.  I tried to ask exacting questions that were relevant to non-profit knowledge of this sweet service.

read more

Aspiration, a nonprofit focused on connecting nonprofit organizations with the best software available, just released Open Translation Tools: Disruptive Potential to Broaden Access to Knowledge—a paper documenting learnings and outcomes from the first-ever Open Translation Tools Convergence.

You can learn more and download the paper from Aspiration's website here.

read more

I would like to introdue everyone to a new non profit whose goal is to establish a new national symbol of remembrance for fallen service members.  Please visit www.honorandremember.org

We are a fairly new non profit received the paperwork on September 9th.

Looking for any help to build as this campaign moves forward.  We have already had legislation introduced into the house of representatives.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

What are the key questions nonprofit orgs should ask to help them determine how to prioritize social media training and experimentation as they do their technology and organization-strengthening planning?

 1) Who in our agency is already excited about social media and social networking?

Getting involved in social media as an organization should not feel like a chore. Let staff who already have a passion for this take the leadership in ways that work for them. Consider clearing other responsibilities from their plate so that they can:

read more

When putting together a social media strategy, be it your initial plan or a revamp, please (except in a few - very few - exceptional cases) stop offering me another movement to jump onto.

A while back, I worked for a woman for three months as a contracted employee - something of an odds and ends outreach person - and after finally putting some thought into her mission, she finally came up with an overarching objective: "I want you to use the Internet to start a movement around [the release of my book]."

The publication in question, which read like a textbook, was a heady and conceptual description of a particular element of global economics. Her goal was radically unachievable and immodest.

read more

Google has apparently applied for a series of patents that will enable it to a put a value on how connected you are, within your social network. Akin to the "pagerank" system used by the search giant for valuing the popularity of websites, "friendrank" would help identify individuals who are particularly influential within circles of friends.

read more