Many Crib Notes readers are also users of Powerbase — PTP’s online database specifically designed for groups engaged in community organizing. For the uninitiated, we developed Powerbase in response to the litany of problems organizing groups were having with existing databases, many of which were designed for businesses, not grassroots organizing.

To help our community get the most out of Powerbase, our Powerbase Community Engagement Director Josué Guillén has put together a really helpful set of screencasts for organizers wanting to do everything from simply adding a new contact to running fundraising drives.

Below are a couple of examples, but go to PTP’s YouTube page to check out all 16 videos.

 

 

 

For better or worse, Facebook continues to “evolve.” In the last few weeks alone they have introduced three new features: improved Photos, the Ticker, and Top News. Copyblogger has offered up three easy ways that folks can take advantage of these latest Facebook features:

1. Upload those big, beautiful photos

The new photos are much larger.

When you upload an album you can create a mini-story that is eye-catching and provocative. Post more pictures on your Facebook Page and think about what story you can tell with the photos.

The other great thing about the new photo size is that they take up more space in the News Feed. You are claiming more real estate than a typical post. Remember to add comments onto the main picture in the Album so you can also get your message across, along with your great images.

2. Keep track of The Ticker

The Ticker has probably been the most controversial of the changes Facebook introduced. Some people like it, others can’t stand it, and some have hidden it.

The way to get the most out of the Ticker is to encourage interaction. When you are getting more interaction throughout the day on your posts, other people can easily click on their friend’s Ticker update to see what their friend is commenting on or Liking

Your post can have a longer life if there is a continuing conversation. Any time someone comments, their friends have the potential to see the post and the thread of comments, then jump in and add to the conversation.

Post often (once or twice a day if possible) so you can pop into that Ticker more often.

Make sure you are sharing great, relevant content and ask questions related to that content in the update, just as AllFacebook.com did in the Ticker shown here.

3. Stay on top of the Top Stories

Top Stories aren’t actually completely new.

We used to have Top News and Most Recent on separate tabs. But now they are blended into one stream. Top Stories are what Facebook thinks you want to see, based on past interactions.

If you want to be a Top Story, make sure you are getting those comments and Likes.

So how do you get more comments and Likes?

 

Turns out there are not huge swaths of the American public spending their day using social media.  Here are some surprising stats posted by our friends over at Frogloop:

• Twitter: 1.1 % of the U.S. population is on Twitter. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• Facebook: While Facebook says that they have 150M U.S. “active” users, which is 48% of the U.S. population, only 50% of active users login any given day. So 24% of the U.S. population logs into Facebook on any given day to check or post updates. (source: Facebook)

• LinkedIn: 0.37% of the U.S. population is on LinkedIn. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• YouTube: 19.94% of the U.S population is on YouTube. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

• MySpace: 1.19% of the U.S. population is on MySpace. (source: April 2011 results from Experian Hitwise.)

According to the Care2 Frogloop blog, group texting can make organizers lives a lot easier in communicating quickly and more efficiently with key staff.  Imagine  you’re organizing a field event and need to keep in touch with 15 organizers throughout the day. Group texting offers a good option to stay connected, answer questions, and deal with logistics. In other words, loose the dorky looking walkie-talkies.  Frogloop broke down the basics of group texting for us. Here’s how it works:

If you’re a first time user, create an account with a service provider like Groupme or Fast Society and download their app. Users can usually create an unlimited number of texting groups via smartphones, a standard mobile phone using texting commands or even online through the vendors website. Invite others to join the group by typing in their names and phone numbers and start texting away.

When you add people to your group they will receive a text message from the service provider notifying them that they’ve been added to your group. They will also be able to view other group members. Every time you and other members send a text, the entire group receives the text message so remember not to abuse it with unnecessary messages because you want people to find it useful and not tune you out. You can delete the group at any time.

All of the group texting service providers offer similar services but in the race to become the most popular, there are also some slight differences. A list with pros and cons is available here.

But Be Aware of Extra Fees: Most of the group texting service providers let users toggle back and fourth between getting SMS texts and receiving notifications through the provider’s app. Be aware that messaging and data rates may apply depending on the users contract with their mobile provider.

Younger folks juggle a whole range of electronic devices in their daily lives. Pew has put out a new study that found that younger users prefer laptops to desktops and using their cell phones for a variety of functions, including internet, email, music, games, and video.

Among the findings:

• Cell phones are by far the most popular device among American adults, especially for adults under the age of 65. Some 85% of adults own cell phones overall. Taking pictures (done by 76% of cell owners) and text messaging (done by 72% of cell owners) are the two non-voice functions that are widely popular among all cell phone users.
• Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, with 69% of Gen X, 65% of Younger Boomers and 64% of Older Boomers owning these devices.
• Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop:  70% own a laptop, compared with 57% who own a desktop.
• While almost half of all adults own an mp3 player like an iPod, this device is by far the most popular with Millennials, the youngest generation—74% of adults ages 18-34 own an mp3 player, compared with 56% of the next oldest generation, Gen X (ages 35-46).
• Game consoles are significantly more popular with adults ages 18-46, with 63% owning these devices.
• 5% of all adults own an e-book reader; they are least popular with adults age 75 and older, with 2% owning this device.
• Tablet computers, such as the iPad, are most popular with American adults age 65 and younger. 4% of all adults own this device.

Additionally, about one in 11 (9%) adults do not own any of the devices we asked about, including 43% of adults age 75 and older.

As protests in Egypt heat up, government authorities have quickly moved to shut down nationwide internet access — something that is frighteningly  easy for elites to accomplish and should be a wake-up call for all of using corporate-controlled platforms as organizing tools. But undaunted, protesters have quickly switched to using a new app called SayNow that doesn’t require an internet connection to broadcast twitter messages. SayNow is a voice-based social media platform that gives Egyptians three phone numbers to call and leave a voicemail, which is then posted on the Internet as a recorded Twitter message. The messages are at twitter.com/speak2tweet and can also be heard by telephone.

According to the New York Times “The result is a story of a revolution unfolding in short bursts. Sometimes speaking for just several seconds, other times for more than a minute, the disembodied voices convey highly charged moments of excitement or calm declarations of what life is like in the Arab world’s most populous country as it seeks to overturn the rule of its leader. Not all of the callers were phoning from inside Egypt. On Tuesday the service started to identify the country, with a hash mark, from which each recorded message came. While most were from Egypt, they included calls from Germany and the United States in Arabic and English, as well as messages from Arabic speakers in the Netherlands and Turkey.”

This is a great example of the novel marriage of old technology — land lines — with a new social media tool — Twitter. And an App that some of us might find useful for our folks stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Traditionally animation has been prohibitively expensive for many groups.  The software runs in the thousands of dollars and requires a highly skilled designer. Well, those days may be over. Several new do-it-yourself programs are now available…and free!  We like free stuff.  Two popular versions are Xtranormal and Moviestorm. They’re designed to helps amateurs write, produce, direct and edit their own digitally animated movies. We tried out Xtranormal and made a simple 2 minute animation in 20 minutes. Here’s how they work:

1) Pick one or more animated “actors” from 12-15 options.
2) Using the text-to-move function simply type up the dialogue.  We used a previous written article as a test case.
3) Drag and drop various editing “tools” into your text. You can, for example, drop in camera angles, changes in facial expressions, pauses, etc.
4) Choose opening or background music.
5) Hit preview, watch, make some edits until your satisfied.

That’s it!  Here are some great examples, including one starring Obama.

David Pogue, technology critic at the New York Times, has put together a “handy clip-and-save” primer on social networking.  It’s for those who know little about Web 2.0 — or as Pogue writes: Those that Facebook left behind. Here are the key sections:

FACEBOOK: This is the biggest social networking service, with almost 500 million members — 22 percent of everyone on the Internet — and it’s growing by 5 percent a month.

It’s a glorified “facebook”— name-and-photo directory — of the sort that colleges distribute to incoming freshmen. (In fact, Facebook started out exactly that way, as an electronic facebook at Harvard.) You answer as many questions about yourself as you feel comfortable sharing: your name, contact information, relationship status, favorite music and maybe a few photos. Then you search for friends, past or present. When they accept your friend invitations, you can now see their Facebook pages and they can see yours.

Why you’d bother: Facebook is great for sharing news, photos and videos with people who might care; for finding long-lost friends (or snooping on old lovers); for joining groups that support various causes or interests; for sending messages (it’s somewhat more streamlined than regular e-mail); and for playing games with each other (FarmVille, Mafia Wars).

Why not: Facebook keeps making policy and programming blunders that expose personal information to other Web sites. It also lets its advertisers place ads on the pages of very targeted members: divorced 45-year-olds in Texas, for example.

Similar: MySpace (a teenage and preteenage crowd, heavily focused on pop music and do-it-yourself page designs), Bebo and many others.

LINKEDIN: It’s Facebook for the professional set. Here, the concept is establishing a “who you know” network of current and former business colleagues.

Why you’d bother: LinkedIn is especially useful when you’re looking for a new job — or a new employee, which helps explain its 70-million-strong global membership — because you’re no longer limited to asking your immediate colleagues for referrals. Now you can ask colleagues of colleagues, which greatly expands your reach. LinkedIners can also vouch for one another as references.

A popular feature called Answers lets you ask business-related questions of people who might know — advice on everything from résumé formatting to business software.

Why not: As with Facebook, not all connections are legitimate. When people accept “friend” invitations from people they don’t actually know, the whole trusted-colleague concept weakens.

TWITTER: This is the service that lets you send tweets — er, brief, 140-character updates that feel a lot like text messages. They can be news, jokes, observations, links, gripes, questions, anything.

Except instead of sending them to just one person’s cellphone, you’re sending them to a handful, or thousands — as many as have signed up to receive them from you. Meanwhile, you’ve signed up to receive other people’s postings (to “follow” them). Once you’ve signed up for a few good ones, the messages scroll up your screen, like the transcript of a global cocktail-party conversation.

You can use Twitter on its Web site, but it’s much easier if you do it using a free Twitter-reading app for your computer or phone, like TweetDeck, Twitterific and Twitter (the official Twitter app for the iPhone, formerly called Tweetie).

Why you’d bother: News frequently breaks on Twitter (by being passed around so fast that pretty soon, everybody’s heard it). It’s fun to follow famous people; the stuff they (or their minions) type appears directly on your phone or computer screen, without any layers of interpreters in between.

Using search.twitter.com, you can find out what the world is saying about you, your company or any topic that interests you.

And if enough people, or the right people, follow you, you can get something truly revolutionary: expert, instantaneous feedback on questions or opinions.

Why not: Twitter can be a lonely place when you first sign up. Figuring out whom to follow, and how to get people to follow you, takes time and effort. And Twitterites use a lot of conventions and shorthand codes that can be confusing at first.

Similar: Google Buzz, FriendFeed, Facebook updates.

FOURSQUARE: As cellphones with GPS become more popular, crazy new possibilities pop up — like Foursquare.

It knows where you are. So when you open the Foursquare app on your iPhone, Palm, BlackBerry or Android phone, you see a list of restaurants, bars and shops near where you’re standing. By “checking in” (tapping the name of the one you’re in), you broadcast your location to your friends. There’s a game element, too: you earn points whenever you check in. In fact, whoever visits a certain place the most becomes its “mayor,” and may be rewarded by a giveaway from that business.

Why you’d bother: You can see where your friends are right now, making it easy to meet them. Businesses can offer you free products as you walk by (“Since you’re right outside, how ’bout a free coffee?”) — win-win marketing. And your buddies can leave pointers about an establishment (“avoid the halibut”) that appear right on your screen as you enter. Really cool concept.

Why not: With not quite two million members — mostly bar-hopping twenty-somethings — Foursquare isn’t for everyone. Most people don’t use it, and most businesses aren’t listed yet.

Similar: Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite.

YELP: It’s a huge database of restaurants, shops, hotels, doctors, museums and attractions, all easy to find, with store hours, directions and phone numbers, covering 34 cities. But the magic is in the customer reviews: 11 million of them so far, mostly helpful and articulate.

Why you’d bother: Armed with those reviews, you have no excuse to go to a terrible restaurant or shady shop again.

Why not: There’s always a chance that the reviews are being manipulated (although the company says it’s diligent about filtering out suspicious ones).

Similar: OpenTable, Urbanspoon.

THE BOTTOM LINE: These sites all derive their power the same way: We, the people, provide the information — not the Web site owner. Some of these services establish lines of communication between people who might otherwise never meet, joining them by interest rather than geography. Others connect you with people you do know, or once knew, so that you can help each other out.

Many grassroots are still struggling with how to transfer their long-standing offline newsletters and newspapers into the online universe.  Many still have a dedicated readership — often their older members — who look forward to getting a printed publication every month.  But printed material doesn’t translate well online. Some groups simply post a PDF version — but that’s cumbersome. Others split up the content into blogs, email letters, etc.  — but this often fails to show the breadth of an organization’s work.

One possible solution is Issuu, a digital publishing platform that allows uploaded print material to be viewed through a web browser and is made to look like a printed publication with an animated page flip options.   While the documents are meant to be viewed online, they can be downloaded and saved as well. There’s a free version on Issuu’s website and the full, customizable version is $19 a month.  You can also use the service to publish books, reports, etc. The service is used by some of the largest publishing houses in the country, including Random House, Cambridge University Press.

According to a recent PEW poll, daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months, from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008 to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009.  Here are some key findings:

• 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004.
• Those phones have become indispensable tools in teen communication patterns. Fully 72% of all teens – or 88% of teen cell phone users — are text-messagers. That is a sharp rise from the 51% of teens who were texters in 2006.

And it’s not just frequency – teens are sending enormous quantities of text messages a day.

• Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.
• Older teen girls ages 14-17 lead the charge on text messaging, averaging 100 messages a day for the entire cohort.
• The youngest teen boys are the most resistant to texting – averaging 20 messages per day.

In other words, text messaging has become the primary way that teens reach their friends, trumping face-to-face contact, email, instant messaging and voice calling as the go-to daily communication tool for this age group. However, according to the study, voice calling is still the preferred mode for reaching parents for most teens.