Hindsight Is 20/20: Would You Still Recommend Nonprofits Use Social Networks?

In February 2006, members of the Net2 Community were asked, "What emerging tech tool do you think has the most potential to help nonprofits and NGOs create social change?"

Here were the results, ranked in order of preference:

- Content Management Systems, 29.41%
- Social networking, 29.41%
- Podcasting, 11.76%
- RSS (publishing information to an RSS/XML feed), 11.76%
- Blogging, 5.88%
- Cell phones/SMS, 5.88%
- Social bookmarking (e.g. del.icio.us, Furl), 5.88%
- Aggregation (republishing content from RSS feeds), 0.00%
- Tagging, 0.00%
- Wikis, 0.00%
- Other (posted here

A year and 8 months later, do you still think social networking and CMS can create the greatest impact for nonprofits?

Seems like social networking, in particular, is starting to reach its peak.

Chris Messina discussed some possible solutions to social networking fatigue in his post, Stop Building Social Networks.

Both Lucy Bernholz and Nedra Weinrich recently pointed to NOSO:

"NOSO is a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking environments. The NOSO experience offers a unique opportunity to create NO Connections by scheduling NO Events with other NO Friends."

A spoof of Facebook, Crackbook, has been created as well:

Crackbook is an addictive social utility that makes you feel that you're connecting with people when actually you're just not."

How have social networks and Content Management Systems had a positive impact on your work?

Given what you know now, what social web tools do you think have the greatest potential to help nonprofits and NGOs use the social web for social change?

Image Credit: Too Many Social Networks by Matt Keefe.