Craigslist Foundation launches LikeMinded
The Craigslist Foundation unveiled its LikeMinded network today - you can check it out here. This is the second launch from the Foundation in 2011 - they launched CraigConnects several weeks ago.
LikeMinded, which is supported by the Knight Foundation and Craigslist Foundation, is a way for people to share their own stories of making a difference in their communities and to connect with their local officials.
CraigConnects is Craig Newmark's 20 year commitment to sharing his work with local organizations and giving others a place to do so as well. I'm looking forward to June 2 in San Francisco when I'll be interviewing Craig about these developments as part of the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp.
Tomorrow at the Global Philanthropy Forum I'm interviewing Chris Hughes of Jumo and Leila Janah of SamaSource about the roles that technology plays in the social sector. Judging from the launches of LikeMinded and CraigConnects it clearly plays a facilitative, news sharing, organizing role.
Jumo is structured so that the technology also plays what I think of as a "train station" role - it's a meeting place, connection hub, information source all in one.
SamaSource is using the internet as the new work space - literally creating a marketplace of jobs on and about digital work. This marketplace is by definition global, disbursed, and a "loose coupling of many small pieces." The internet is both the infrastructure for and the source of the work.
These are all organically digital uses of the internet. They're based on assumptions about information, audience, scope, and access that reflect the way these things work in a global, connected, always on, super fast environment. Their business models respect the value of the pieces being connected, whether those are individual workers to Fortune 500 companies (SamaSource) or activists to each other (LikeMinded). All of these sites share a mix of data and social connections as core design elements - similar to the power of the Peer Water Exchange which I mentioned a few days ago, and which offers one of these "head to long tail" platforms I've written about for years.
I'm looking forward to my conversation tomorrow with Leila and Chris. I plan to double check my insights with them, get their wisdom on what's next for platforms and social policy, and what they imagine we'll see as more and more digitally native social solutions come online. Join us if you can (Twitter Hashtag #gpf2011)
Tags: philanthropy, #gpf2011, #globalphilanthropy, #samasource, #likeminded, #craigconnects, #jumo