Is it possible to build a successful web portal and community hub around issues and activism? So far, no one has succeeded in this quest, though there a lot of people trying and one could argue that sites as diverse as DailyKos.com, Townhall.com, and Idealist.org each play this kind of role for tens of thousands of reader/members, and projects like the Facebook Causes platform built by Project Agape, Razoo, Changing the Present, Donors Choose and Kiva.org each have somewhat similar aspirations.

One of the longer-distance runners in this search for the holy grail of social change organizing online is Ben Rattray of Change.org, who Josh Levy and I wrote up back in December 2007. Back then, Change.org was going through its first major re-design, shifting from focusing on individual users looking to connect with specific causes, to a platform for organizations looking for a ready-to-use social network toolset tuned to their members. The elevator pitch Rattray used with us was that Change was "Ning for non-profits," and he thought the new approach would not only meld well with the site's 50,000 members but would also, through subscription revenue, help float Change.org's boat.

Well, now Rattray is on to a new vision and strategy to expand Change.org's reach, and as close readers of this site already know, he lured Josh away with promises of untold riches and seventy virgins to help him build it out. (No, we are not bitter.) Earlier this week I had a chance to chat with both of them about this new approach, and here are my notes on the conversation.

We've talked a great deal about data this cycle, from Obama's use of Catalist and VAN to the Republican National Committee's vaunted Voter Vault. And this election may indeed be the election of databases -- but it might be the states' voter databases we're talking about on November 5th; It's amazing what you can learn about new media while waiting in line at your local bagel shop! The polished, intuitive interfaces that the Obama campaign gives supporters to engage with that data -- from the iPhone app to MyBarackObama to Vote for Change -- may well make it the first campaign to truly master the modern art of interfaces. And the White House might be their prize for it; and a fair amount more.

The enormous number was breathtaking: six million people sent in questions through the Internet for Tom Brokaw to pose to John McCain and Barack Obama during Tuesday night's presidential town hall in Nashville. Breathtaking -- and entirely wrong; Building on what seems to be growing momentum behind using Twitter as an election protection tool, an online organizer has detailed possible standardized tags; Using donor data from ten large tech companies as a representative sample, ZDNet's Robin Harris finds that tech employees support Obama to McCain at a rate of nine to one; and much, much more.

It's late and it's Yom Kippur, so I'm going to be brief: Go read all of Zack Exley's detailed field report on "The New Organizers, Part 1: Obama's neighborhood teams and the power of inclusion and respect." Exley, one of the country's consummate NEW political organizers, who started out as a labor organizer and then got in early on internet-powered organizing first with his satirical GWBush.com, followed by stints with MoveOn.org, the Dean campaign and the Kerry campaigns, has written a powerful and convincing depiction of the people-powered, hyper-networked engine purring away under Obama's hood.

Was last night's presidential "town hall" in Nashville hosted by Tom Brokaw was a bust?; NPR social media bloke Andy Carvin's launched an intriguing last-minute "distributed dial testing" Twitter experiment yesterday. To participate, you simply included a one to ten rating of the candidates in your tweet, set off by asterisks; expanding upon the idea of using Twitter as an election protection tool, Culture Kitchen's Liza Sabater lays out some provocative ideas for taking advantage of the decentralized, network world and the humble cell phone to mix things up; and a good deal more.

Did anyone use MySpace's MyDebates page, the "official online companion to the Presidential Debates"? Alas, not too many. And it looks like only four questions of the millions submitted online were asked by Tom Brokaw, the event's moderator. That, plus the pre-agreed rules that prevented the studio audience from asking follow-up questions or even showing emotion, made the "townhall" style presidential debate more like a wax museum animatronic replica of a townhall. What a shame.

Tom Browkaw, moderator of tonight's "townhall" presidential debate is reportedly sifting through six million questions that poured in online. Yeah, um, let's hope Brokaw has a posse of twelve thousand interns, because there's no way he's getting through those alone; Campaign videos like the McCain team's "Celeb" ad may air as paid TV spots only a few times and in a handful of markets, but they can still be seen by millions -- both as earned media when news shows rerun them and on YouTube. That's powerful bang for only a few bucks; Now that the powers-that-be in the House of Representatives have revised internal web rules to free congresspeoples to start Twittering, the Sunlight Foundation has whipped up a Capitol Tweet widget. Embed away!; and quite a bit more. Promise.

Are we going down the tubes, or can we use the tubes to save us from ourselves? When I'm not distracted by the latest news, that's what I'm trying to think about these days. Here are some unfinished thoughts on the topic...

Five people I have spoken to in the last two days, including a House member who sits on the SSA appropriations committee, who are all intimately involved with trying to persuade the Social Security Administration to delay it's "routine maintenance" have all gotten different explanations. From the "this is just our regular time for doing maintenance and it isn't partisan", to "it's the only three day weekend in the fall when our folks are available to do it", to the most draconian, "if we don't do it the entire system will crash". But don't take it from me, feel free to email the Congressional liaison at SSA, kenneth.a.mannella AT ssa DOT gov and ask him yourself!

By Nancy Scola and Allison Fine

We know. It sounds ridiculous at first. But it might not be as crazy as you think. For far too long, the job of election protection has fallen largely to lawyers schooled in election law. But there's an opportunity before us right now and through Election Day for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of citizens to identify and rectify voting problems in real time. Enter Twitter.