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 [...]

From what I can tell, it didn’t originate in some giant marketing agency six months ago. It doesn’t involve a large nonprofit organization. There was no strategic plan or market test. And there is no budget. There is no staff. Yet over the past couple of a days, the cause of child abuse awareness has [...]

We talk to clients about this all the time (and blather on at conferences and on panels as well) but one of the key goals of really engaging with social media is to carry on a meaningful conversation with a group of people, usually gathered around a topic. This is harder than it sounds, though [...]

Socially-conscious social media is working up north: Alaskans have taken to the Pick. Click. Give. campaign, which is leveraging platforms from Facebook and Twitter to YouTube and Causecast to draw attention to and explain the Permanent Fund Charitable Contributions Program. The program began officially in 2009 to allow Alaskans to donate a portion of their [...]

To anyone who’s worked in direct fundraising, “churn” isn’t exactly a new concept. Indeed, losing members of any list comes with the territory of appealing for money to support causes. Yet when users leave social networks it seems somehow different than opting out of an email list. That’s because the investment of personal time and [...]

onPhilanthropy.com – The Stimulus and Philanthropy: Meaning Beyond Money An important post by Dr. Susan Raymond: “Estimates vary, but the last 18 months have seen something on the order of $10 trillion in disappeared assets in the American economy, as much as $25 trillion globally. Storied names in finance are no more. Whole industries teeter. [...]

Online social activism platforms are, generally speaking, lean operations. The more than 40 platforms we’ve identified here at CauseWired (and supplemented by Christine Egger over at Social Actions) do not boast deep balance sheets laden with venture capital, or vast marketing operations designed to build their brands rapidly. As hard times nip at the world’s [...]

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 [...]

The book’s title has one thing going for it – it tends to make people curious. “CauseWired, eh?” they’ll say, perhaps rubbing a chin or two. “What’s it about?” The easy answer is “the rise of online social activism,” but that’s too short for anything but the quickest of elevator rides. So I thought I’d [...]

As Hillary Clinton conceded the hard-fought Democratic primary to Barack Obama on Saturday, many observers noted their campaigns’ online grace notes. The Obama campaign thanked Clinton on its front page, and prepared a special video page to pay tribute to the pioneering New York Senator. Clinton’s campaign called for supporting Senator Obama, and even included [...]

In December, 2007 the foundation created by America Online founder Steve Case and his wife Jean launched an online program aimed at inspiring everyday people to adopt wired causes, and to motivate nonprofit organizations to begin to take advantage of the burgeoning social Internet. Through the first-ever America’s Giving Challenge and Causes Giving Challenge, the [...]

Last night, over at the barn, our pick-up band trotted out some old Neil Young licks and we bashed away on our guitars on some classic Boomer rock. In the midst of the audio carnage, one of the guys picked out the lead lines from Ohio, that brilliant protest song recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash [...]

The business pages are filled with stories of start-up companies and massive valuations. Google grows ever more rapidly into a global powerhouse. And the reach of social networks like Facebook stretches every day. Americans are living more of their lives in public, creating vast lists of online “friends” and professional colleagues, sharing their experiences, their [...]