Mobilising Online Communities

Social networking sites offer new ways of informing and communicating with stakeholders who have internet access, provided that they are also members of the particular social networking site you are using. We would suggest surveying your stakeholders to see which, if any, of these sites they are using, before incorporating social networking into your campaign strategy. Different sites are popular in different regions, for example while Facebook is ubiquitous in the US and Egypt, Orkut is popular in Russia and Brazil, and Friendster dominates in the Phillipines.
These sites should be used with a certain amount of caution as many of them not only control content but may (as is the case with Facebook) not actually reveal how they use the personal data that users must give them in order to join. These are commercial ventures, and privacy is not their primary concern. Nevertheless, these sites provide unique opportunities to connect with your constituencies and the public at large.

If you are interested in using social networking sites, see wikipedia's 'List of Social Networking Sites' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites