What has the advent of social media – indeed, the networked worker – meant for corporate social responsibility programs and employee activism? That’s the topic of a new white paper I’ve co-authored with my friend and longtime collaborator Howard Greenstein. Sponsored by the JK Group and released under the auspices of New York University’s Heyman [...]

On Sunday night, Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network will be one of the two or three betting favorites for the year’s best picture at the annual Academy Awards extravaganza in Hollywood. The film tells the (largely fictionalized) early story of Facebook, wrapped in the coming-of-age tale of founder Mark Zuckerberg and the compromises he chose [...]

I’ve had a few notes from friends over the last two weeks that all ran along the lines of “this is CauseWired coming to life!” meaning Egypt and seemingly-spontaneous January 25th uprising, which deposed strongman Hosni Mubarak today. Yet I hesitated at accepting congratulations for the foresight of my 2008 book on the rise of [...]

You won’t find it on Time Warner or FIOS or Cablevision, but Al Jazeera’s English language television service is laying claim to the viewing loyalty of vast numbers of news-hungry, media-obsessed westerners following the incredible story of courage and revolution in Egypt. More than any of the social media platforms we’ve come to worship with [...]

Some lucky nonprofit or social entrepreneur is going to win a free free laptop and printer bundle courtesy of HP and CauseWired Communications! But you’ll have to answer a key question first, in order to win: “How we’re going to use social media and web technology to change the world.” Drop your ideas and thoughts [...]

Putting the imperative issue of civil rights and justice around the world for women and children front and center at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative required intense coordination between CGI and the Obama Administration – starting of course with the world’s foremost power couple. But it also relied on some special sauce that was both [...]

Online marketing guru Seth Godin takes aim at nonprofits in a widely-quoted blog post “The problem with non” today, a diatribe of sorts that repeats a meme that’s been active in American philanthropy circles for at least a decade: nonprofits are afraid of change. And it’s true, of course – at least on the surface. [...]

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Max Gladwell. Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that [...]

As Craig Newmark notes in an article on Huffington Post, President-elect Barack Obama ran on a platform that included a call for a national “craigslist for service.” But as Newmark writes, he’d like craigslist itself used “only a metaphorical reference to the need for greater service to others, with the spirit and culture of trust [...]

If President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team are looking for a model that uses the power of social networks and citizen democracy to open up government, they ought to bring their own homepage – Change.gov – and replace the g-o-v with a little o-r-g. Online social activism portal Change.org, whose origins predate (by just [...]

I’ve been thinking about this since the Republican convention a month ago: isn’t the CauseWired movement the virtual empowerment of thousands – and potentially millions – of community organizers, that class of do-gooders so derided by the GOP nominees in Minneapolis? Sure, I know their derision was about knocking down a portion of Barack Obama’s [...]

JD Lasica has been one of the true guides in the evolution of Internet-based communities and networks for well more than a decade. His 2005 book Darknet was a seminal piece of reporting about the personal media revolution, and certainly an inspiration for some of what I’m trying to accomplish with CauseWired. And I’ve been [...]

The industrious team over at Social Actions – that would be founder Peter Deitz and new arrival Joe Solomon – has created a wiki to collect ideas around what applications, mash-ups, and tools to build using the Social Actions API, which aggregates giving and volunteering opportunities from 19 different online activism platforms, including Kiva, DonorsChoose, [...]

The “PR Guy” has an excellent white paper up about how art museums can use social networks to build stronger relationships with donors and members. Here’s a piece: I don’t know of a single museum director who doesn’t want to stay in touch with donors and patrons. In the past, marketing and communication departments have [...]

I’ve been quiet here for a very good reason: I’ve been writing! But I wanted to point out a recent post over at GigaOM that shows the long history of online social networks. Lots of folks believe they kind of sprung from the Internet ether sometime after the year 2000 – but in fact, what [...]