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Time for a Change (.org)?

Oct 9th, 2008 by Joe Newman | 28

Change.org launched its redesigned Web site this week. I never spent too much time on their old site, so I can’t really compare the before and after. However, what I’ve seen of the after is pretty encouraging.

I’m not quite sure how many more social networks I can maintain without suffering serious overload but I’m going to give this one a tryout period.

Again, I can’t really remember what the old site was like because I had only logged onto it a couple times but I don’t recall it being content driven. That has changed with the redesign, which revolves around several staff blogs, each focused on a pressing social (progressive) issue, such as human rights, fair trade and stopping global warming, among others.

Will becoming a content provider, while providing a social network for progressive activists and a fundraising tool for nonprofits be a successful mix? It’s not a new concept but I think the difference here may be in the execution.

Compare the new Change.org format to Care2 or Idealist. Not exactly an apples to apples comparison but I think in this case, the folks at Change were quicker to realize the power in more tightly integrating all three concepts of content, social network and nonprofit tool.

Is there room for all three of these sites to prosper, since they are competing for basically the same audience? And while we’re at it, we should throw Facebook’s Causes application in the mix.

Of the four, Change and Care2 seem to be in more direct competition. Both now provide content, though in different manners. Change produces more original content, while Care2 is an aggregator, like Digg.

And while Care2 has an active social network and drives a lot of visitors looking for content, they’re also apparently making some changes in response, perhaps, to Change and Facebook’s Causes. If you visit Care2, you’ll notice that they are preparing to launch a “causes we care about” feature.

The measures of success for sites like Change and Care2 will be how much traffic they can generate, how successful they are as fundraising and call-to-action tools for nonprofits and their ability to build a membership base that is willing to maintain their social profiles at least once a week.

From my perspective as Joe citizen, I will probably not maintain an active profile on more than one of these sites, since my time is already spread pretty thin. From my perspective as a non-profit media strategist, my organization probably needs to be involved with all the sites until we can determine which one(s) gives us the most bang for our buck.

It’s one thing for someone to “join” a cause or nonprofit through one of these social networks and it’s an entirely different thing to cultivate an active and engaged member.

Venture Beat posts about the change at Change.org

[Update: Literally seconds afer I made this post, I saw Max Gladwell's tweet about the same subject. Check out his excellent post on the subject.]

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28 Comments on “Time for a Change (.org)?”

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    Like you, I didn’t spend much time on the old Change.org. I might have visited it once, but I definitely don’t remember it well.

    However, I think what they’ve got now is fantastic, largely due to their decision to center everything around the different issue blogs. :)

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