208B: Blog Assignment 6

How can social software help to build new kinds of public space and discourse? Analyze one of the networked political organizations (such as MeetUp or MoveOn � or others) to understand how new forms of political coordination and power are being created.

Well MeetUp is definitely more of a social space facilitating real-world interaction whereas MoveOn is more just a regular website that attempts to galvanize people around focused campaigns. MoveOn seems particularly good at raising money through donations and stuff like the bakesales they had in April. In that sense, MeetUp is much more interesting to analyze.

Meetup has various different fora all with one aim: to get people together in the real world who share a common characteristic. There are meetups for various things like knitting and spanish speaking but some of the most popular are politically related and centered around political figures like Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and George W. Bush.

These meetup sites allow all sorts of interaction from providing more information that members or interested parties might find useful, to fora where people can discuss things to organizing tools that allow the real world meetups to happen. From a cursory glance at various meetups, they appear popular... that is, many people have "signed up" for particular meetups. However, the pictures in most of these seem to betray the fact that when a real meetup happens it's no more than a handful of people. That's probably a good thing as I could imagine very efficient software combined with determined people could make for crowded bars of knitters and gente que estan hablando espa�ol.

Posted by joebeone at Mayo 14, 2004 08:09 AM