DISQUS

olin lagon · 1 year ago

Nice post! Good to see these types of efforts covered here.

Easton Ellsworth · 1 year ago

At Blog Action Day 2008, we've loved working with Joe Solomon and the gang at Social Actions. They've set up a widget that we'll use in connection with our big event on Oct. 15. Super exciting stuff! Thanks for the mention Leslie.

Brendan · 1 year ago

I've always wondered: what's with the bad screenshots?

Vi Wickam · 1 year ago

Eric, I think you are right. If you aren't careful, you will end up spamming your twitter followers, and that would be bad. :(

Beth Kanter · 1 year ago

I love social actions and Joe Solomon who is awesome.. but I'm having a problem with this approach. Anything that I ask my friends or followers to support, I personally vet - I know the organization has the capacity to do what it says its going to do or know the individual - personally or by reputation. Something that is automatic and based on a keyword search takes a great leap of faith ..... I guess my personal philanthropy is just old fashioned .. and while I may be passionate about a particular issue, I really give based on knowing the person behind the cause or organization and have confidence that will do a good job with investment.

Christine Egger · 1 year ago

Beth, this is something the Social Actions community is concerned about, too. There are two parallel conversations/developments going on: one, get these opportunities to take action out in front of the people who would be compelled to get involved if they knew they existed; two, make sure that the opportunities you're inviting people to take are in line with everything they stand for, which includes the trustworthiness, value-match, and all of that other stuff that goes into 'vetting.' Right now, the API that these mashups draw from is pure action-description based, but we're all excited about finding ways to layer meta-data onto those action-descriptions that include vetting from sources that YOU trust (i.e. layer a StumbleUpon type rating from a blogger, issue-expert, yourself, or another source) onto the Social Actions API. That'll come as quickly as people can see the potential for building those kinds of mashups on top of this mashup. For now, it's a thrill to see this early example of the power of the Social Actions API to deliver opportunities to engage, and the sky is truly the limit as we think about how to layer trustworthiness onto this incredible aggregation.

Beth Kanter · 1 year ago

Christine - thanks for sharing that context! The holy grail would be some sort of rating or crowd sourcing layer - so the organizations or individuals behind those actions who have the passion, capacity, and determination to make sure their efforts have a true impact would rock.

Also, the rating system or crowd sourcing or some sort of filtering would also help when there are so many, many, many actions out there that it turns into drinking from Fire hose ...

Christine Egger · 1 year ago

Absolutely, Beth. We're using the 'fire hose' metaphor, too, to describe how overwhelming it is to suddenly be aware of just how many action-opportunities there are out there (13-16,000 campaigns on DonorsChoose alone -- yikes!). Aggregating each and every actionable opportunity we can find feels like the right first step, though, in creating a really rich, inclusive universe of actions that the rating/sourcing/filtering apps can then draw from. That segways into the reply to Martin Smith of JustMeans, below, for why he's surprised to see we're subscribing to his RSS feed...

Peter Deitz · 1 year ago

Hi Mashable, Thanks for covering the launch of our Twitterfeed app. We'll keep you posted on future mashups. The beauty of the Social Actions API is that anyone can create any kind of mashup for social change. For instance, Beth, if you want to vet your tweeted actions, I'm sure you, me, or someone we know could build out a web app that would do just that and still draw its recommendations from our API.

Social Actions maintains an open source / public domain database of 10,000+ actionable opportunities. The mashup possibilities are endless. If you have an idea for something you'd like to build, let us know or just get started on it.

Our API documentation can be found at: http://www.socialactions.com/labs/api

Congrats to @engagejoe and @mariomenti for a mashup well done.

All the best, Peter

Martin Smith · 1 year ago

I was not aware we are participating in this, in fact if we are, it is unknown to us. Maybe if someone from SocialActions reads this, they could reach out and tell us how we are participating without knowing about it or opening our API. Thanks!

Martin Smith
JustMeans

Peter Deitz · 1 year ago

Hi Martin, We have been working with Marcus and Zach of JustMeans (from the NY office). I'll follow-up by email to explain the nature of the collaboration. For now, we are aggregating only the "events" posted to JustMeans via RSS. I've also signed up to be a regular blogger for All Things Reconsidered. Apologies for the confusion. All the best, Peter

Leslie Poston · 1 year ago

Interesting debate going on in the comments here. In my opinion the potential for making it easy to get people involved outweighs any need for nanny-ing the Twitter stream on this one. The nice thing about Twitter - if something feels spammy, people will tell you, and you can stop. And if you don't stop, people can unfollow you. It's very a la carte and self directed and doesn't require a lot of policing or rules, which is why Twitter works so well in the first place.

I think this mashup is the start of something great, and I can't wait to see how it improves in the next iteration with rating tools and other matrixes.

Martin Smith · 1 year ago

Peter,

good times...thanks for clarification. let me know if there is anyway I can help.

martin