Building Communites Online

Whenever I think of building communities online, I always think back to President Obama's campaign and to the work that he has done with Organizing for America (OFA) to shape his policies.

This past month, as President Obama and Congress prepare to confront the issue of health care reform, OFA asked Americans to organize in groups to share why health care is important, and to develop action plans for the National Health Care Day of Service, held this past Saturday. OFA uses targeted emails, Youtube, blogs, and modified meetup tools to get people actively engaged in government. They used similar tactics leading up to the economic stimulus bill.

While other sites and online projects, like Facebook and Twitter are great tools for bringing people together online. OFA has taken this a step farther and gotten people to take action offline.

Though, the '08 campaign and the hot topic issues that President Obama is tackling are important enough to many people that maybe they would organize without OFA's prompting. My inclination is that they wouldn't--not in the same numbers and not towards the same goals.

But, still, everybody is trying to use online tools to organize people. Many causes are not as pressing as the '08 campaign or a failing economy, but people still try to organize around the Denver Broncos, food, and the environment. It's all worth a shot.

The keys, I think, to organizing online are compelling content, and simple processes. You've got to grab people, and you've got to make it easy for them to act.

But, my concern is that the Internet is becoming saturated with pockets of organizing, which will diminish the space for causes that are actually worthy of large-scale organizing.