Are Non-Profits and Activists Using Google+?

Non-profits and activists have been early adopters when it comes to using social technologies to organize themselves for political or social action. Yet, from what I can tell, they have largely bypassed a platform that seems ready built for the organizing mind. I am talking about Google+.

Activist Brian Gerald Murphy in an undated blog post calls it "the best tool yet available at the fingers of activists", although he evidently wrote the post before Google+ created corporate pages since he says "Unlike Facebook, which is rife with businesses, organizations, and applications, Google+ is (for now) comprised entirely of individuals." 

Brian sees the obvious benefits of Google+'s 'Circles' architecture for organizing people into teams and managing different private or public layers of communications to them as well as using Google+ Hangouts for idea exchange or action planning.

A quick Google search unearths a few early articles on uses for nonprofits including this one from the always-worth-reading Beth Kanter and a lengthy post on Hangouts On Air by Daniela Capistrano. And there is Marc Pitman's book, which I haven't read, called Google+ for Nonprofits: A Quick Start Guide to Unleashing the Power of Googel+ to Promote and Fund Your Nonprofit. Most stress the obvious value that a Google+ page gets your content displayed more prominently in Google searches, certainly more than anything you post in Facebook community.

But there's not much on Google+ and political activism. And that's a shame, because I can think of at least three additional reasons Google+ could help political or social activists:

1. Political and activist organizations — and non-profits — often assume ideological commitment and unanimity among people who sign up to help. (The Canadian New Democratic Party does this and loses a lot of support because of it.) Their efforts at keeping volunteers close are lame. Google+ could be used to create safe places to nourish volunteers with special access to leaders, guest speakers (in Hangouts) or organizing communities of volunteers only. 
2. Post on Google+ knowing that all those big-league ideas are visible to all your followers and the public — if you choose. With Facebook, your posts aren't necessarily seen by your followers because that is decided by Facebook's EdgeRank.
3. Use Google+ Communities to start and sustain focused public discussions on issues, programs, problems and strategies at the essence of the organization's mission. . . and because they are on the web, Google search will find them. 

Stop worrying about whether Google+ is going to beat down Facebook: If Google+ works for you — and it can — then use it. 

Pinterest News

Pinterest continues working at making itself more useful for the 'engagement' part of the social web connection—engagement—influence—action continuum.

Some Pinterest users have seen their 'Activity' tab replaced by 'News' the goal of which according to Pinterest,

(I)s to make it easy to find relevant and interesting pins. News will show you the boards where your pins were repinned to, so you'll find other pins you might like.  

The people at Curalate have done a better job than I could at extrapolating what this could mean for Pinterest-based social campaigns:

It’s a great way to go beyond raw Pinterest statistics to discover more about the people who love your pins. This feature can help casual Pinterest users explore the network for kindred spirits. After all, we can predict that someone who repins our stuff will probably like many of the same things. However, we think that professional marketers and brand managers on Pinterest will use the News tab to meet three kinds of people:

Companies and organizations should be able to parse the impact of their Pinterest boards more precisely and target accordingly.