Ron Paul presents a contradiction to those who believe a totally-wired, socially-networked population will change politics and how we elect candidates. The libertarian Republican Congressman from Texas has been a true gadfly in the GOP race – contesting the legitimacy of the Iraq war while calling for the virtual end to the large Federal government [...]

Ben Casnocha, the author of My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley has interesting post on his blog about a young Duke University student with a rare disease who has – in part -used Facebook Causes in his battle to fund life-saving research. Ben writes about Josh [...]

Beth Kanter has a brilliant post today about what she’s learned from a 20-year-old Cambodian American college student. I love Beth’s honest point of view – that Nhuong Son, who is raising money for Cambodian children via social networks and the Web may have a different view of how to recruit supporters online than a [...]

One trend I’ve noted of late is the extent to which social causes tend to figure in forward-looking media technology developments. Take Australian tech writer Nick Galvin’s year-opening top 10 list of “things that will change your future” – two of the 10 are explicitly social causes, Kiva and Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child [...]

The Bergen Record has a big piece on online microfinance today, with a strong focus on Kiva. Nothing new there – Kiva’s press has been brilliant for a year and I’ve contributed to that trend myself -  but I liked the focus on young professionals. Those of us with more years under our widening belts [...]

Want proof that social networks are effective tools for social change? Just watch the dictators in action. Facebook, the popular social site often used by political activists to organize members around global causes has been banned in Syria, reportedly over fears of Israeli “infiltration,” reports the Associated Press. Comments the Seattle PI’s Monica Guzman: The [...]

Beth Kanter, one of the real experts of using social media to benefit nonprofit organizations, has a different kind of New Year’s post up – four lessons she’s learned about social networks and nonprofits. This one struck me in particular, given my personal (very rewarding) experience with newcritics: 2. Size doesn’t matter:   It isn’t how [...]

I’d missed this great piece in the Washington Post the week before last about the cause of liberal democracy in the Arab Middle East, and how young activists are using social networking tools to plan for a more open, democratic future. Six months ago, Ahmed Samih, the 28-year-old director of the Andalus Institute for Tolerance [...]

Politicians, especially the national variety, have gone super-social in their Internet pleading for votes – and many create real causes around their candidacy. But actual policy work is still pretty rate. I’m prejudiced because I sit on their board, but the folks at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a progressive think tank in [...]

Philanthropy blogger Sean Stannard-Stockton has his list for predictions for the nonprofit sector up, and here’s number 10 – certainly one I’ll be paying close attention to over the coming months as I work on this book: After Facebook’s Causes application is believed to have played a significant role in the increased voter turnout for [...]

Phil Cubeta runs GiftHub.com, a philanthropy blog with a clear point of view, thanks to Phil’s sterling rhetorical style. Today, he points to a profile of the 28-year-old founder of GiveMeaning.com and throws in this gem: Out of these online transactions, I hope we begin to develop a peer to peer consciousness too, and come [...]

I came across a great post from October by veteran Web developer Nate Ritter, who wrote about how Twitter feeds and other social media tools really helped out in the wildfires around San Diego. Here’s a taste, but read the whole thing: Even though I was aggregating two TV channels, a radio station, a local [...]

Ah, good old 1996 – the first of our “wired” national elections. Bill Clinton versus Bob Dole, with special guest appearances by Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Lamar Alexander. The information superhighway, online debate transcripts, participatory democracy, candidates on email – and all that jazz. We were so smart then. Fast forward to the 2008 [...]

The CauseWired resume is a good one to have these days: the New Organizing Institute, formed to train online organizers to work on campaigns, reports a huge supply-demand imbalance in the market for people who know how to use online tools to help candidates and causes: We are seeking to fill an urgent need among [...]

When 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan died on Dec. 20th while awaiting a liver transplant her insurance company refused to pay for until it was too late, her case moved beyond one family’s desperate struggle to save a young life and become a cause for thousands of people who discovered her case on the Internet – on [...]