This is a lightly revised note that I shared with 157 fellow Net Tuesday Organizers this past Friday evening, concerning Causes' recent announcement to 'abandon 184,674 users' on MySpace. Here's a quick way for you to share it on Twitter & Facebook.

Dear friends,

I hope this note finds you well on a lovely evening. Or morning. Or afternoon. We're a truly global bunch - so this note could find you at just about any time of day or night. Which offers somewhat of an introduction to something I want to share with you.

So much of the work we do is around connecting people across boundaries, from different countries & time-zones (from Douala to Tokyo to Vancouver) to different ethnicities, classes, and cultures within our own communities. While we don't have a stated mission, it may be fair to say we use the web to strengthen the fabric of our social ties with the intent of weaving together a better world. We use and push for tools that break down barriers, help diverse voices get heard, and bring more of us together for the beautiful array of changes we all seek.

Sadly, Something recently happened in the world of web tools for social change that seems to go against this -- of what we aspire for and work towards with a democratic web.

As a consequence of your ancestors and mine having spent their lives living in small groups the Social Media world has great interest in Dunbar's Number.

Its been a concern long before the Internet however.

Authoritarianism's rise, which developed along with the move to organized agriculture from a hunter/gatherer existence thousands of years ago and persists in many places today, was due to:

Roots of the Social Network

We developed and in essential nature remain a social, small-group oriented species.* The majority of your ancestors and mine spent their lives relating to no more than a few hundred people. That's how it was from the time we were still in trees to the birth of agriculture. And for many it remains much that way today.                                       *see Dunbar's Number for more on natural human community size

It seems that there’s a bit of a thread out there on a few blogs, something in the air, a terrible question that’s being asked: are social networks actually a useful fundraising strategy?  Read more...

Everybody understands the value and power of social networks. However
these remain propietary and have a number of privacy and control
issues. We'll incorporate existing social networking software (could
be Elgg, NoseRub, Pinax...) that not only will provide "One Social
Network Per School", but will jumpstart the first (that I know of)
massive, self-replicating, decentralized educational social network
ecosystem, a network of social networks. And we want to make it extra
easy to add a node anywhere on the globe.

If you are voting and still have an option, please consider supporting our proposal.

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/free-social-networks-rural-education

We think it really rocks.

A day or two ago I wrote about social networking and the Development 2.0 challenge.  Actually, I had something bigger on my mind, but I needed to try a small bite first. The positive responses suggest that there's a hunger out there for something bigger.  Well, maybe this could fly with enough help...  

Whenever a new administration comes to Washington, a cottage industry springs up to produce briefing documents, sometimes called white papers, to advise the government on priorities.

Hi. I just submitted a proposal to the USAID Development 2.0 Challenge called "Social Networking to Improve Advice on Development Priorities to Incoming Administration".  USAID rightly champions the principles of good governance as fundamental conditions for successful development - principles of transparency, participation of stakeholders in decision making, and access to information, for example.  I want your help to turn the spotlight back on USAID and give it the chance to bask in some governance goodness.  I think that social networking tools could help heighten the dialogue on priorities for foreign assistance in the US.

Interpublic's Emerging Media Lab and SocialVibe have a patented micro payment system that offers incentives (e.g. charitable donations to favored causes like World Wildlife Fund and Stand Up to Cancer) "to the members of social networks who promote their brands on their personal pages". The public beta began in May 2008. Can you DIGG it?

Yesterday I asked you what kinds of case studies of nonprofits using the social web you'd like to read about on the NetSquared Blog.  In a comment on a different post, Joe Solomon reminded me about the socialmedia4change wiki.

The socialmedai4change wiki is a community wiki of examples of how nonprofits and social change makers are using social networks for social change.  It has examples of how people are using:

Carie Lewis, Internet Marketing Manager at the Humane Society, talks about how the humane society is able to raise funds, awareness, and activity through social networks.