After reading the article Online Activism: Media Stereotypes and the Rise of Smart Mobs by Robin Good, I went to check out the site mentioned in the article, Avaaz.org (which I must admit I had not heard of before). Avaaz was co-founded by Res Politica, a global advocacy group and MoveOn.org, a US based internet advocacy community. The first thing I did was check out some of the campaigns advertised on their site, which range in subject matter from climate change to the war in Iraq. I then decided to sign up. The problem I found was that, short of asking me for my credit card information to donate to them or campaigns they have advertised and invite my friends, I did not really find any examples of how I could personally use the site. There is no home page that identifies me as an individual member of the site or any way for me to actually network and communicate with other members.

Apparently, Avaaz has been enormously successful in obtaining global interest for their various campaigns. For that I commend them, although it is unclear as a newbie to the site how they achieved this. It seems like if they added in some more social features, they may be even that much more successful.