Social Media

New to social media and web 2.0 tools?  While it might seem like a lot, social media or web 2.0 resources can be enormously helpful to your organization.  Social media can help with your communications at all levels - from staff to volunteers to board to donors of all kinds. Here is some information about some types of social media...

Readings

• Mobilizing Generation 2.0
• Blogging for Dummies
• I'm on Facebook Now What?
• I'm on LinkedIn Now What?
  

Blogs

What is a blog?

• Beth's Blog
• Idealware
• NetSquared
• Nonprofit Tech Blog
• Nonprofit Technology Network
• Technology for Social Change
• Technology for the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sector
• Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology
• Social Media Gestalt
  

What is Facebook?

From Wikipedia: Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves.

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What is LinkedIn?

From Wikipedia: LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking. As of December 2007, its site traffic was 3.2 million visitors per month, up 485% from the end of 2006. As of October 2008, it had more than 30 million registered users, spanning 150 industries.

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What is Twitter?

From Wikipedia: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

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What is Ning?

From Wikipedia: Ning is an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks, launched in October 2005. List of other resources for self-created social networks: www.mobilizingyouth.org/resources/social_network_build.

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What is a Wiki?

From Wikipedia: A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranets and Knowledge Management systems.

From Mobilizing Generation 2.0: Wikis are Web sites built through ad hoc collaboration.

Wiki Gardener: From Mobilizing Generation 2.0: This term refers to a person who keeps a wiki organized. Without gardening, wikis tend to grow into an unmanageable tangle of incomplete paragraphs, odd formatting, and links to nowhere. Gardeners also keep out such pests as spammers.

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