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Current News

Making Social and Email Work Together

Community building is the key to online capacity, but because the phrase "social networking" is used to refer only to a narrow set of well-hyped commercial tools, it's hard to keep our eyes on the real prize: building and enriching connections between our stakeholders. One of the specific consequences is the way in which people have gotten distracted from email, which remains the most powerful online social tool of all. "Making Social and Email Work Together" by Jeanne Jennings is a short post that will help get you re-oriented around using all the media that your stakeholders use, in concert. Posted: 3/9/10; 5:49:49 PM #

The Wrong Kind of Green

I've wondered for years what was going on with the increased funding of major environmental organizations by some of the world's most egregious polluters. It's been going on for years, but I'm not enough of a policy analyst or environmental news wonk to really discern the impact. Well, in The Wrong Kind of Green, Johann Hari spells it out. Frankly, it's deeply disturbing. We need independent advocates for the environment more than ever, but after twenty years of cooptation, many of the biggest players are, at best, neutralized. This is scary. Posted: 3/9/10; 5:43:40 PM #

Zynga Insists Its Haiti Charity Was Not a Scam

As far as I can tell, the target of "what is cool" keeps moving, but the dynamic and the consequences are always the same. When we're motivated by hype, we are likely to lose more than we gain. Take the case of recent fundraising for Haiti by Facebook game company Zynga. They may deny that taking more than 50% of donations intended for the people of Haiti was a scam, but I don't think any of our readers would consciously hire a firm that did that. Posted: 3/9/10; 5:36:56 PM #