Leaders of non-profit organizations all across the country may want to sit up and take notice. Ben Rattray has opened the public beta of his new site, Change.org. Here's what he says about it:

When I first heard about the interactive website Second Life, I thought "I don't even have time for my first life, let alone time to create a second one." And so far, I haven't made much time for it, judging that until Linden Labs makes the interface easier to use, it wasn't going to grab that many denizens beyond some digerati and perhaps some folks with too much time on their hands. But I have noticed lots of political hackers, and even some hacks, playing in this new space. One-time presidential candidate Mark Warner did an event in Second Life; the RootsCamp community has been holding a regular weekly meeting there; and Reuters have even set up a bureau with a reporter dedicated to chronicling the news of this rapidly-growing playspace, said (by Reuters) to be approaching two million members with a growth rate that would make MySpace jealous.

Here’s an excellent and effective example of using MySpace and YouTube to tap into thriving online subcultures with the hopes of activating them toward a specific message. In this case, the subculture is the Harry Potter online community and the message is for WalMart to start treating its employees and surrounding communities with respect.

In the interest of full disclosure the comedy troop involved are really good friends of mine.

WalMart Watchdog, WalMart Watch hired the Late Night Players to make a video where Harry Potter must fight the Dark Wizard, Lord WaldeMart. With the help of many leaders in the Harry Potter community, the video has caught on like fire in just a few hours. It’s too early to tell what will happen, but in just a few hours it’s become one of the most popular videos on YouTube for the day. Related to this are the politically orientated Harry Potter Alliance and WhatWouldDumbledoredo.com. More updates on this story to follow, but if you’d like to check out the video, here it is (or click bellow):

First, watch the "Free Hugs" video on YouTube. Now, ponder what this might teach us about politics, the internet and the zeitgeist.

Some background is in order. A year ago, Juan Mann was just an odd guy standing in the Pitt Street Mall in Sydney, Australia offering "free hugs" to passing strangers. One of the people he hugged was Shimon Moore, the lead singer of the Sick Puppies. They became friends, and one day Moore decided to borrow a video camera showing Mann doing his thing. As the "free hug" campaign started to spread, the city council tried to ban it, even attempting to impose a huge liability insurance requirement on him for offering free hugs in public. So Mann and his friends mounted a petition campaign, and after presenting more than 10,000 to the city council, the calls for a ban died away.

"The Paper of Record" is hardly the one place to get the gospel on anything, but when 4 NYT articles in 24 hours talk about customers, fans, and online contributors driving the direction of not just web sites, but franchises and products, then I'm comfortable saying leadership via consumer collaboration is on the radar in a new way.

Katie Hafner's article on gating access to some Wikipedia entries highlights the need for some level of process and hierarchy even in an open community. The inevitable need to close a small number of entries some of the time echoes my favorite PDF article ever, when Zephyr called for a "productive tension" between the hub of a campaign and its spokes.

Last weeks San Francisco Film Festival had 20 movies entered that where made specifically for mobile devices and the "Pocket Cinema Program."

The films are, naturally, short but contain explosive and even political issues like Katherin McInnis' spookspeak, a four-minute film parodying the National Security Agency's Echelon electronic eavesdropping program ( perfect subject matter for a cell phone film).

Joe Dante's Showtime political-horror parable "Homecoming" showed war veteran zombies rising from the grave to vote against the president who sent them to die for a lie, while, according to Variety, "a Karl Rove-like presidential adviser and Ann Coulter-like pundit (the names have been changed, but just barely) manipulate a talk circuit where gaseous windbags presume to speak for the military’s fallen."

Scriptwriter Sam Hamm granted an interview with Corrente's Victor Shystee in which he discussed the influence of blogs on the development of the moive:

It does have sort of an "Atrios's Greatest Hits" quality, doesn't it? But that’s the air we breathe. We’re in the midst of one of the most genuinely grotesque administrations in American history, one that will be long remembered for its corruption, mendacity and malfeasance. In Washington D.C. you cannot swing a dead cat by the tail without hitting a crime or a scandal or a national disgrace. So it was no great feat for us to cram a bunch of hot-button issues into the margins of our story. The big trick was deciding what to ignore.

| Read more ...

Could the JibJab hype actually have any real bearing on politics or public policy? A new animation from Consumers Union for its Prescription for Change campaign against big pharma could be a symptom of the potential impact of silly cartoons on political activism.

As was apparent at last week's Politics Online Conference in DC, the popular animated poli-celeb spoofs created by the accidentally famous JibJab Studios, has had a lot of folks in the poltical campaign arena...uh...jibber-jabbering (couldn't resist). I'll admit, every time I hear somebody refer to their big viral Web hit, "This Land," in the context of political campaigning, I can't help but roll my eyes. Even at the PO Conference, a panel moderator asked whether humorous Web animations will be the future of political advertising.

Wha? It wasn't the political content that spurred the eruptive viral response to the cartoon as much as it was its dismissal of the tense, politically-charged pre-election atmosphere. More important, it was the humor (not to mention the accompaniment of a recognizable All-American ditty) that really brought on the buzz. Once CNN and Jay Leno caught on, the media frenzy moved from word-of-mouth to word-of-chin (haha). Anyway, until now, I pretty much blew it off as a fad that may have exhibited the power of viral marketing, but wouldn't have much ability to get people seriously interested in a political issue or candidate.

Washington, DC is often called “Hollywood for ugly people.” This reference came into full light yesterday at the 2005 Annual Pollie Awards ceremony.

The Pollies are the equivalent of the Emmy Awards for political consultants. The event featured an hour long reception, followed by a Hollywood-style formal dinner. Despite the blizzard, hundreds of consultants were in attendance, many forced to watch the events unfold on televisions in “overflow rooms” after the main ballroom filled beyond capacity.

Hosted by the America Association of Political Consultants, the awards honor the best consulting work of the previous election cycle. There are awards for everything from “Best Presidential Television Ad” to “International Political Consultant of the Year.” Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards are presented to winners in most categories.

I had the pleasure of attending the Pollies in 2002, but tonight’s awards ceremony was of particular significance. It marked the first time that the AAPC included a full range of awards for Internet campaigning. Categories went beyond the standard “Best Congressional Candidate Website” to include awards for “Most Innovative Use of Technology” and “Best Use of Humor in a Banner Ad.”

Internet users watch less television than individuals without web access. This according to a group of political scientists from the aptly-named Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society at Stanford University. They report that online users watch TV for 1 hour and 42 minutes a day compared with two hours for the ever-shrinking group of unwired Americans.

No big surprises here.

However, the study also suggests that television isn’t the only thing being cannibalized by online usage. An hour spent online also reduces face-to-face time socializing with family by a whopping 23.5 minutes and shortens sleep by 8.5 minutes. I became tired and lonely just reading the findings online.

For a condensed version of the SIQSS study, read the New York Times article on the topic.