" There are about 50 social networks, and they each have thousands of groups of individuals in these little private circles. It is not like you can send out a blast to everyone on the list and expect them to respond enthusiastically. You really have to do what Jacob Colker did, and go door-to-door--the equivalent of door-to-door online and get to know people, spend some time."

Ben Rigby is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Mobile Voter. He is also the author, with Rock The Vote, of a new book coming out in April, Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0 Technologies to Recruit Organize and Engage Youth. You can listen to the interview on the NetSquared Podcast, or read an edited transcript below.

Ben Rigby: I'm Ben Rigby, and I'm the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Mobile Voter. We started in 2004 creating SMS text messaging software to enable young people to register to vote via their mobile phones. Actually, that was our initial idea. We wanted people to be able to complete the entire registration process on their phones. I talked to the Secretary of State's Assistant at one point and he said, "You will never be able to do that." He was dead right. We tried for a few months to get some rules changed so we that could do everything without paper, without a signature, but that was idealistic thinking.

So, we modified the software to enable people to request the voter registration form via SMS, and this worked pretty well. We were able to go to politically interested performers, musicians, singers, etc. and convince them to stop their show in the middle of the show and say, "Hey everybody, it's important that you register to vote. Text me at 75444 and we'll get a voter registration form to you."

Our software took over from there and engaged the person in the process of providing the information that was required to either mail them the form, or send them to a website with a lot of their information pre-filled out on a form that would generate a PDF voter registration form, that they could then print out.

Then we added social networking features, and we added the ability for people to send their friends a text to help them register to vote. It got very complex and interesting. We did that for about three years. Most recently, I have written a book that looks into how nonprofits and political campaigns are using Web 2.0 technologies to engage young people in civic life and politics.

It came out of this mobile voter project because I was talking to so many organizations who had no idea what you could do with text messaging, or blogging, or social networking. So the book looked into the different ways organizations are using the tech.

Britt Bravo: Your new book, Mobilizing Generation 2.0, can you tell me a little more about what that is about?

BR: Sure. it's about how nonprofits and political campaigns are using Web 2.0 tech to engage young people in civic life and politics. There are seven main chapters. Myself and my research teams looked into blogging, social networking, video and photo sharing, mobile phones, wikis, maps and virtual worlds. In each of these areas we investigated how the software was being used by organizations to accomplish their mission related objectives.

We found a lot of successes, a lot failures, a lot of false starts, wrote them up, did some analysis and said, "Here are the successful strategies in each of these areas. Here is what we know so far. Here's what we have yet to know. Here's what the future may bring."

In between each chapter I either interviewed, or solicited an essay from someone who I consider to be a luminary in the field. They wrote about various topics. These essays interweave the book.

BB: Can you give an example, or tell a story of one of the success stories that you wrote about in the book?

BR: Blogging and mapping stood out as the two areas in which there is the most excitement, and most success. I didn't know much about mapping before starting the book and doing the research for the book. It became this kind of obsession for me for a while. I was telling my girlfriend about all these mapping things. And she would say, "All right. Shut up about mapping already."

There is a coalition called I Love Mountains. I think you guys covered them on NetSquared.

BB: Yes.

BR: They created a layer in Google Earth. Google Earth, if you don't know, is kind of like a virtual globe that you can spin around and investigate satellite imagery of various maps. They are a small number of people who are actually using Google Earth because you have to download software, so there are a lot of barriers to entry. It's not quite a technology that is there yet in terms of making social change, but the incipient concepts are so fascinating, and the way that you can get down to ground level in a place that you have never been and explore. In the case of I Love Mountains, you can explore the destruction of the Appalachian Range. So I went. I checked out the I Love Mountains layer, and I was compelled to donate right there.

I said, "Oh my God. I have to donate to this cause. It's terrible what's happening in the Appalachian Mountains." It puts you in a place and makes you connect with the people and the landscape and terrain of that area. I think, that's the real power of mapping, is to connect you so viscerally with somebody's story by putting you in their shoes, in their landscape. That, to me, was a very powerful concept.

BB: For people who are listening who work with young people, and they want to start using social web tools for advocacy, what advice do you have for them?

BR: In the conclusion of the book I have four points that sum up the trends that are leading to success in working with young people, and working with the social web.

One is to dedicate adequate resources. A lot of people jump in. They say, I'm going to create a MySpace page, and they expect it to deliver instant results, and it doesn't, because they don't spend enough time. I mean, a lot of these technologies are really analogous to running a ground campaign. You have to kind of roll up your sleeves and get some elbow grease on.

So, adequate resources, really dedicating oneself to the task. The second point is understanding how people use the technology. For instance, again, if we go to MySpace, these are groups of friends who basically know each other in real life. There's not a whole lot of out-of-group communication going on in MySpace. It's a representation of a real life social group, and as a participant in that group you are looked on, as an organization, as an outsider. You're not necessarily a welcome entrant into that social group, so you have to treat your interaction with a given person, or given social group, with a degree of delicacy. Just as if you were walking into a group of existing friends in real life.

Really understanding how people are using the technology and what the cultural norms are for each of the given technologies is crucial. That's point two.

Point three is that there is a tendency to focus on the technology at the expense of people. For instance, in the Google Earth example--I got really excited about it. I thought, "This is great, fantastic. I love it. It's so compelling."

But the fact is that for most people, the interface is too complex, the download is too long, and their computers are not fast enough. So the danger is in fixating on the technology without really getting a sense for how people are using it, why they are using it, and what technologies are actually integral to their lives already, and figuring out how to leverage those technologies to make a real connection with a person.

The fourth area was a willingness to embrace the Web 2.0 ethos or ethic. That has to do with letting go of control, handing it over to your supporters, creating a structure that really delivers the ability to act to your supporters, rather than telling them how to act. That was really key to many of the examples, and that is like the Jim Jones Kool-Aid juice of Web 2.0, and through the process of writing the book, I've drunk it.

BB: Can you give an example of a campaign that used social web tools to organize young people, whether it was to organize young people, or the young people used the tools?

BR: Yes, there is an example of Jacob Colker in Maryland--there is a Comptroller of Maryland campaign, and Jacob Colker was working for the Maryland Comptroller. I think he was 23 at the time. The Comptroller needed more volunteer staff. He didn't have enough people to go out on the ground and campaign for him.

Jacob Colker went to MySpace. He identified people by their profile information. For instance: they were politically liberal, they were studying political science. He said, "These people are the kind of people who will support my candidate." He contacted them one-by-one. It's kind of like the online equivalent of knocking door-to-door. He posted messages on their MySpace pages and said, "Can you volunteer for my candidate?"

I think he got about 200 people to volunteer for the candidate in this small down ballot race. They dropped off something like 50,000 fliers. The candidate won. He had this amazing ground team that was organized using this social web tool.

This story also highlights the fact that it is not just about the technology, it's about the actual people. You get the people on the ground, you get them to do stuff, you use social web tools to get them there. It is a really powerful combination.

BB: You've mentioned MySpace twice in relation to campaigns with young people. Is that, in your opinion, the best tool for organizing young people? Is there one tool that young people gravitate to more? An organization that is thinking about using social web tools for their work, how do they choose the best tool to reach young people?

BR: It really depends on the nature of the campaign, and the organization, and what they are trying to do. Social networking seemed to be one of the most difficult technologies for organizations to use effectively, mostly because the social groups on the social networks, and the social networks themselves, are so fractured.

There are about 50 social networks, and they each have thousands of groups of individuals in these little private circles. It is not like you can send out a blast to everyone on the list and expect them to respond enthusiastically. You really have to do what Jacob Colker did, and go door-to-door--the equivalent of door-to-door online and get to know people, spend some time.

Danah Boyd writes about the digital equivalent of shaking hands. A politician going out into a crowd and shaking hands is sending a message on a social network, and I really believe that is true.

To your question, "What is the most successful example of a social tool," as I mentioned, I think you can't really say, "This is the most successful tool." It really depends on the situation. But at events, text messaging, to recruit young people, is a great tool.

For instance, there was a Save Darfur concert in Central Park. There was a text messaging campaign associated with this concert. Above on the JumboTron, it would say, "Text in to Save Darfur," whatever the short code was. They got thousands of people to text in their contact information such as their email address and their home address.

They used text messaging to gather the contact information to serve as a hook, and then they leveraged that information. They used that information to start up a deeper conversation with the person.

Texting worked as a very superficial tool in this instance--very effectively, but very superficially. After text messaging had done its job, it was time to call that person, or send them a letter, or email them and involve them in a more robust and a richer form of social interaction.

BB: Is there a tool you wish could be built for mobilizing young people in this upcoming election?

BR: I think the given tools are pretty good, and it is a question of using them smartly. I think we've seen some false starts on how to use the tools. If their methods were improved, I think they could be tremendously effective.

As an example of an ineffective use of the tech versus an effective use, we can look at Hillary and George Miller's, a Congressman of California, use of YouTube. Hillary had a campaign--Hillcasts with Hillary Clinton in which she said she was going to start an online video conversation. She filmed herself with professional lighting in a very presidential looking office with lots of makeup on, and answered questions that were read to her by an intern.

It was a half hour video. She got slammed by people on blogs and YouTube. She didn't even put it on YouTube; she put it on her website. They said, "Why didn't you put this on YouTube? We can't even respond to you. How come you're not taking questions directly? Why do you look so canned?" She stopped doing Hillcasts after a few--I think she did three of them--in this format, and then stopped. I'm assuming because she thought that they were not being very effective at reaching youth.

On the other hand, George Miller has this campaign--I think it's called Ask George or Ask Miller. You can send a question to him by a variety of means. You can text it in; you can email it in. You might be able to call it in. He has so many ways for people to send him questions, which makes him very effective.

You can tag a question on your blog--tag it anywhere. If you tag it "askmiller" he does a search and he finds your question [Correction: the tag is "askgeorge"]. Then what he does is he has people vote on which questions are the ones that he should answer. And he answers the question in a two-minute video.

For most questions he has determined that two minutes is really not sufficient to address the question in depth, and he has recorded a longer answer. So he has met the typical attention span of the online audience, which is about a minute or two minutes, but then offered an avenue for someone who really wants to get into greater depth. He has created that avenue for them, and people ask him tough questions.

They say, "I don't think you are doing a good enough job on getting out of Iraq. You said you would fight this battle for us, you said you would get out of Iraq. But, you are not doing it." And he answered the questions directly. He plays back the tough questions and responds to them. And, there is a dynamic conversation going on which has really lowered the barrier to politicians, which has been so high. You know, they are in Washington, they are far away, they are riding in limousines and surrounded by bodyguards.

If Hillary were to use the tech in that way, it would make her much more accessible. Obviously, there is a risk, because she could say something off the cuff. There is that whole fear. Again, using the tech in a way that is more in line with the Web 2.0 ethos, I think, would be a strong move.

BB: The other thing I was wondering is, in the States, we are so behind in our use of mobile phone technology and texting for advocacy, and for everything else. What are some interesting ways that other countries are using mobile phones for advocacy that it would be smart for us to bring over here?

BR: What is interesting is that we are way ahead in advocacy, in general, in the field of advocacy and nonprofit action, compared with the rest of the world. But, we are, on mobile phones, incredibly behind the rest of the world, and that has mostly to do with the way that the carriers have a dominance over the nature and structure of the networks.

There was a recent case where NARAL, the reproductive rights organization, wanted to create a text campaign to communicate with their members. Every text campaign has to be approved by the wireless carriers before you can start using your short code. Verizon denied them. I think the words they used were, "unsavory and improper." They had some absolutely outrageous way to define NARAL's communication with their members. And then they quickly recanted, because they realized this would become a big issue, but it reinforced the fact that the carriers have this stranglehold over a. innovation, in the marketplace, across the board, and b. they can put a muzzle, on demand, on organizations they feel aren't acting in accordance with their sense of propriety.

This is really the barrier in using mobile phone for advocacy in the U.S. In addition to the fact that it is very difficult at the present point in time to get location information, which is provided either via GPS, embedded GPS chip, or by tower-based triangulation. Only the higher-end phones, at this point, have the GPS chip embedded.

The carriers don't make the triangulation data available, even though it is in the phone. If this type of information were in the phone, if it were available, and there was less of a stranglehold by the carriers, you would see a lot more innovation and exciting advocacy work happening on mobile phones.

There was a recent campaign called Fish Info that just launched, and is doing pretty well. You can text in the name of a fish, when you are at the market, and get Blue Ocean Institute's environmental rating on that fish to see if a. it is healthy, and b. if in farming it, or fishing it, they are using deleterious methods. The problem with it is, you have to remember to do it when you are at the market.

What would be great is if Blue Ocean Institute could enter in the location of any market in the United States, or any given area, into their database, and when you approached a market, it would recognize that you were near the market and send you, if you signed up for the service, a text that says, "Hey, don't forget to text in the name of your fish so that you can see whether it is on our approved list or not." That kind of ability will really enhance the capability of advocacy work on mobile phones.

BB: What are some of the social web and advocacy trends you think we will be seeing in the future?

BR: Well, I think this whole mobile phone thing is ready to break. I mean, Google's entry into the, or even the idea of Google entering into the mobile phone market, as they have recently, has really shaken things up. Google said, "Hey, we are going to create this open platform called 'Android' for mobile phones." The proposed platform is very open and would revolutionize how we interface with our mobile phones.

Then Verizon said, a couple weeks later, "Oh, you know, we are going to open our blah, blah, blah, blah." And, they used the word "open" because they wanted to mirror what Google was doing. But, you know, they were just making some minor part of their platform available to a certain, given number of people. They weren't really doing anything in the spirit of openness, but they felt the pressure from Google, and started to move. I think that pressure will be felt across the board. There is so much pressure gathering on these carriers to change their policies, because they are so restrictive. So, that would be a really exciting evolution.

Right now virtual worlds are a fascinating field. I was just reading an article about how our brains believe that we are in a virtual world when we are experiencing it. We have evolved, over hundreds of thousands of years, to believe that when we see something, we are experiencing it. Virtual worlds are convincing enough to our brains to make us think that we are actually experiencing something emotionally when we are interacting with a virtual world.

Right now, the interface of Second Life is so complex; again it is a really long download. It is like you are born into a new world and you have to learn how to walk, how to fly, how to act in that world. It is very intimidating, and I think what we will see are simplified versions of virtual worlds. Versions that work in line with the Web to a higher degree.

Again, Google, in this area, will be an innovator. They will merge their virtual earth concept with their mapping products, and add a virtual world element into their mapping products so that when you are searching for your pizza store; for example, or your local soup kitchen, your avatar will be delivered to that spot, and you will be able to walk around and experience it virtually, in a way that is much more accessible than Second Life is today.

BB: Is there anything else that you want listeners to know about Mobile Voter, or your book?

BR: I guess just buy the book [laughs]. That would be great. I thought it was finished when I finished writing it, and then I sat down with the publisher and he said, "OK, part two, promotion." [laughs] I didn't realize there was a part two. Now, I'm in the promotion mode and trying to let people know about it. If you are interested in these topics, please buy a book.