There is a vast potential out there right now. Social networking sites may have the key to vast progressive change in this country.
I found this on tribe.net..
Hands On partnered with Friendster last year, in the hopes of attracting enough volunteers for their October 15th event. In return for sponsoring the day, Friendster offered to help with publicity, showcasing the event in its news alerts, which are visible to any Bay Area members who log into the site.
According to Chivukula, about 60,000 people saw the alerts. "Even if only one percent turned out to volunteer, that would be 600 people," she says. Unfortunately, though the event was a success, "we weren't set up to track where the volunteers were coming from. It's hard to tell what the conversion rate was, from clicks on Friendster to volunteers."
The potential here is HUGE. Friendster and Myspace have grown at incredible rates with no outside influence, just people wanting to connect with friends...
I believe that with this political crisis we have in America at this point in time, a network extremely similiar to one of these networking sites would catch on like wildfire in the progressive movement.
We either need to find a service like myspace and either go with that or build out a new network that will do what we want it to- organize the population into a meaningful network so we can enact vast political change.
These blogs are great sites and are the future of content in the information world, but we need to all come together in ONE site, so we can coordinate both national and local campaigns.
In the end, I see this as a powerful tool for finding leaders in every community and eventually it could be powerful enough to break the strangehold the 2 party system holds on this government and elect independent candidates around the country.
People, your comments are great, I love feedback on my crazy ideas. I am ready to build this network out if a good one does not exist already, but I desperately need people to help me. Especially those who know how to build websites!!