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Social Actions explained  - Sources of online actions

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Saved by Christine Egger
on April 7, 2010 at 5:47:15 pm
 

 

 

This page was created for [online action sources] and the people who work with them. It's a place to describe how they can use Social Actions to promote campaigns, websites, and other resources they have developed that share ways people can take action on the causes they care about. We have prepared this page thinking about questions you may be asking yourself. You will find them in italics.

 

 


 

I've never heard of Social Actions before. What is it?

 

Social Actions is a project presented by a group of people who, with ideals and ideas, are working on three big things:  

 
  • Making it easier for people like you to make a difference on the causes you care about.
  • Promoting collaborations that advance the work of social innovators.
  • Developing open source software that adds a philanthropic layer to the web. 

 


 

What does Social Actions provide that would be useful to me?

 

First and foremost is the Social Actions API, which makes it easy to share your data automatically with other sites and tools, and, through them, with people and organizations in your area, across the country, and indeed across the world.

 

Participating in the Social Actions API is like sending your targeted press release to a news agency where media around the world can pick it up and publish it, or write about it.

 


 

Why is an API useful? Couldn't we just put a project directly in touch with each technology and avoid the creation of an API?

We technically could, and this is what it all would look like:

 

Social Entrepreneur #1 has launched a project that aims at raising awareness about recycling. It works through talks on waste separation given for free by volunteers in their communities. As a way to promote his project, he has to look up what tools are being used by people who are interested in environmental activism to find ways to get involved, and afterwards send to each of the project developers an e-mail with the information about his project so that it can be included in said tools.

 

In this example, Social Entrepreneur #1 will have to get in touch with 15 different technologists, and those 15 different technologists will be probably getting e-mails from another 50 people who also want their projects to show up in their tools. 

 

This is what this scenario would look like if the use of the Social Actions API were added:

 

Social Entrepreneur #1 has launched the project, and he wants to promote it to get people to give talks in their communities. What he does is get in touch with Social Actions to have his project show up in their API. Some technology developers will draw information from this API to use with the tools they create to help people around the world find ways to get involved in causes they care about.

 

In this example, Social Entrepreneur #1 will only have to get in touch with 1 project, and those 15 different technologists will only have to look at the information compiled by one project to draw from when they create their tools. 

 

(To make it a bit clearer, I will make a diagram for this example to post here in a few days)

 


 

So the Social Actions API can be the connection between my "action opportunity" (or collection of opportunities) and tools that can help promote it. What kind of tools are we talking about?

 

Basically, we're talking about any tool that a developer wants to make drawing from this API. We keep a directory of these applications in this page. There is a bit of everything on this directory - applications that let people share on Facebook or Orkut about projects they're involved in, replace standard Google ads for cause ads, etc.

 

Also, you can find one of these tools on socialactions.com itself: our search engine. Any person visiting there can look for ways to support a cause they are interested in by using the names of causes themselves as search terms. This is the page they land on, for example, when they enter "environment" - http://search.socialactions.com/actions?q=environment.

 


 

And how do I participate in the Social Actions API?

 

By sending an RSS feed (soon, just a spreadsheet will suffice!) that features your actions to us. You can find all the detailed information here. [need to move that page's content here - CDEgger]

 


 

How have other people used Social Actions to draw attention to their campaigns?

 

[There will be two case studies of people who have used Social Actions to promote their projects in this section]

 


 

Is there a place on Social Actions where I can get in touch with other people interested in taking action, philanthropy, etc.?

 

Yes! You can join us at My Social Actions, where you can read or share blogposts, information about events, and mostly communicate with other people who share your interests.

 


 

Where else can I find Social Actions materials?

 

Apart from the apps that you may see in other webpages, there are two main sources for Social Actions information outside the website: the Twitter account we have, @socialactions , and our Facebook fanpage, Social Actions .

 


 

Where do I go if I have any other questions?

 

Apart from having the freedom to post any comments or questions you may have on this wiki, on My Social Actions, or on the Facebook page, you can find some contact information here .

 


 

All the information about other aspects Social Actions can be found at our wiki. Click here to go to the index. 

 


 

Questions for the reviewers:

 

  1. Question for the reviewers: Do you think that the information about the API that I include will allow people who have no idea about what an API is to understand how they can benefit from it? 
    1. This section might work best as a diagram-only. I'm finding the text above confusing, and we would only need to illustrate that feeding an RSS into the Social Actions API is an easy way to distribute their actions globally. At the same time, we want to avoid language that describes the Social Actions API as an alternative to other distribution mechanisms (other APIs, other technologies). It complements other ways to distribute actions. No either-or here :) - CDEgger, 4/6/10
  2.  Do you think that [online action sources] would like to find out about more aspects of Social Actions before becoming involved with their tools? If so, what aspects do you think are important for this?
  3. Also, do you think that [online action sources] reading this page will feel like it's made for them? Or do you think they'd use different terms, structures or ideas?
    1. I think we'll need a different term than "project developers" and have replaced it with "[online action sources]" as a placeholder. Need a more graceful phrase, but want to distinguish "action-distribution" from project-distribution" for as long as it's important to do so. Looking forward to brainstorming collectively on the best terms, structures, and ideas to present here - CDEgger, 4/6/ 10
    2. I agree with the change of the term 'project' developers for the reasons mentioned by Christine above. I think the problem with "Sources of online actions" is that it's a very Social Actions-centric term that may not make a lot of sense to people who are reading an introduction; also, they're not necessarily online actions. They may be individuals of a largely offline organization that uses the internet only to talk about it.

       

      A problem in this phrase is that it sounds like we are communicating to them only because of their actions, rather than because we ultimately want to support their efforts to make a positive impact in the world. Something to ask to ourselves is if we should direct any person who works in the field of philanthropy/activism/service delivery, no matter if they are sources of actions or not, to this page... and explain on it that Social Actions works by doing 'action-distribution' rather than 'project-distribution'; or if we should make this clear starting in the front page options, and just include a reminder for people involved in philanthropy who aren't sources of action to check out the media/casual visitors page instead. - Mariel, 4/7/10.  

 

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