This.cm

This.cm is a new social network that allows people to post one link per day. Thus far, the network is available by invitation only. According to The New York Times and other sources, many people are very excited to get involved and get on the site.

And the buzz is working on me, too. Since I heard about This.cm several months ago, I have frequently searched for it to see if it is available without an invitation yet. I’ve signed up for the email notifications from them so I can find out as soon as it’s ready for the public to join.

I am mainly excited about this site to follow not just my friends, but to follow organizations and groups that I care about. Every day, my Facebook and Twitter feeds are inundated with information and links to different things – all of which I’m sure I would find interesting, but that I might not have time to read. The prospect of having a convenient place to see one most important item per day from each organization that I follow is exciting and interesting.

This leads me to think about the ways that this could be used in the public and nonprofit sector. As we know from class, the best content to post on social media should be informative, entertaining, shareable, and be surprising if possible. This.cm, by its nature, ensures that content posted seems exciting and useful, since it has made the cut of being the one items chosen by an organization to post for the day. A nonprofit could post just one item – instructions to call your legislator about a certain issue, for example – and people reading it would know with certainty that this is something they should take note of and follow up on.

There are potential roadblocks to using this on an organizational level, of course. This.cm would certainly not function as well during a time of crisis, like a hurricane. At that time, there needs to be much more information posted than just one item. Similarly, there is a potential for a large organization to not be able to choose what to post. How does the White House, or the New York Times, decide what one item is the most important to post on a given day? And what are the political implications of that?

I eagerly wait to see where this social network goes, and how it can be used to create engagement between people and the nonprofits and government offices that are most important to them.