I like it. I am in the process of trying to mobilize a new media/social media strategy at my “old” (almost 100-yrs) non-profit (CMMB: http://www.cmmb.org) and find it difficult at times to articulate the importance of online relationship building in understandable terms outside of offline/online binaries and traditional communication modes.

FYI – You quoted my reading response above from a course project blog at The New School, thanks.

Looking forward to reading more.

More importantly, I am very glad your comment there led me to your blog. You and I share an interest in social media and tools of interpersonal persuasion for crowds. Like you, I am a firm believer of the power of technology to mobilize and make things happen. Of course, like anything, one has to be careful to not forget to live ‘real lives’. This is a balance I need to find on a daily basis. Beware of those tweets, they are addictive!

http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/who-should-blog-assembling-the-most-important-voices-in-environmentalism-today/

The online organizes the offline: The offline influences the online: The online strengthens the offline [...] until Kingdom come. Or whatever.

I look to you — and I point you out to people — as an example of someone who is a leader in leveraging all of the tools and techniques of online fundraising and action.

Further, I definitely agree with your last statement – the one about there being more factors at play than the on and offline binary. I definitely think that the structure of an action, and how it is articulated and architected, is vital. In an edit I put into the post at the bottom of the page, I quoted a study that cited strength in numbers — one of the biggest selling points of The Point — to be a big leveraging point with regard to mobilizing youth activists.

I also note and agree that, since the ways in which we communicate online are increasing, diversifying, and deepening, the demand for face-to-face interaction as a buy-in for social trust is changing as well.

Though, the same way that it helps a website/blog entry to get an initial push on a social bookmarking site in order to move forward with gaining some sort of popularity there, sometimes in order to make an action compelling to those we don’t know, it can be helpful to get all of those on board that we do know. This helps to avoid bringing a bunch of traffic to the table, only to have them see that no one is yet supporting it, so why should they?

I think in particular of young nonprofits who have approached me, noting, “We’re just starting up and we don’t yet have much of a reputation in the community.” Along with an arsenal of advice I can give about Twitter and adopting a persona online and reaching out to folks that way, and managing online communities, and reaching out, etc. I point out a tool as simple as meeting some folks face-to-face and convincing them that you’re an actual entity as a good starting point in order to get yourself in front of those who might be otherwise unconvinced.

Twitter is a good tool for what it accomplishes. Shaking hands is a good tool for what it accomplishes. Used all-together, we’re talking about an organic representation of positive, proactive organization that happens in the two overlapping worlds.

“In other cases, the person was asked by someone who I had asked and again both people I had met offline and people I knew only from an online context.”

I think that this is an interesting approach.

So, I think there may be other factors at play — and to consider than offline/online.

Anyway, good reflection on this.