Wordpress
http://www.wordpress.com

What it does : Blogging application. Categorize and tag posts. Pre-made themes and templates to style the blog. Can make some posts private and password-protected. Built-in sidebar features for calendars, photos, video. Spam protection. RSS feed of blog so others can subscribe.

What it wont do : Completely customize your blog

Suggested Use : Small non-profits, who can’t afford a complex content management system, could use Wordpress as a way to create a simple website, as it also allows the creation of static pages.

Advocacy Example : Wordpress offers also a hosted version of its system, under the domain wordpress.com. A Chinese blogger, wanting to report hman rights issues in China, is using Wordpress at http://chinaview.wordpress.com/

Who Owns It : Automattic, http://automattic.com/

Who Owns Your Content : You have the right to license your content however you see fit (They use Creative Commons licenses). However, “By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your Website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your blog.”

Privacy Concerns : They “don't share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.”

Comments : To have more control over your blog, download WP from Wordpress.org, and install on your own web server (many hosts now come with WP pre-installed).

Google Reader
http://www.google.com/reader

What it does : Allows you to subscribe to a website's feed and get updates and alerts from the site as they are posted.

What it wont do : Must be online to read your web feed content.

Suggested Use : Keep up to date on allies websites/blogs, Flickr photo's uploaded by constituents, and get up to the minute news.

Advocacy Example : Many NGOs now offer RSS feeds of their news or blog entries. In many cases, they directly ask people to subscribe to them via news readers such as Google Reader.

Who Owns It : Google, http://www.google.com

Who Owns Your Content : Google

Privacy Concerns : They are ambivilant to privacy challenges. For example, complaints to EU privacy regulators over gmail's indexing and scanning practices were not addressed. Google got the lowest privacy rating of any internet company by Privacy International. (see http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/internet/interimrankings.pdf )

Comments : You can share your feeds with others if you choose to.

del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us

What it does : Web-based application for sharing and categorizing links to any site on the web. RSS feed so others can subscribe or you can integrate links onto other web pages.

What it wont do : Change the layout of your page.

Suggested Use : When an NGO has a specific project they are working on, they could use a keyword, a “tag”, to identify it and promote this tag on del.icio.us as well as on Technorati.

Advocacy Example : The Greenpeace “Green My Apple” campaign made use of del.icio.us by asking people to tag their own blog entries with the keyword “greenmyapple”

Who Owns It : Yahoo

Who Owns Your Content : “By posting content, you are granting permission to us and others to access and use it in connection with the Services, the Site and otherwise in connection with our business.”

Privacy Concerns : According to PrivacyInternational.org, Yahoo “Cooperates with Governments with disclosure of information including Chinese government.” (see http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/internet/interimrankings.pdf)

Comments : Searching for news and blogs on del.icio.us sometimes gets better results than Google because community members have sorted stories they most value.

pbwiki
http://www.pbwiki.com

What it does : Wikis are easy-to-use Web pages that let you collaborate online and share information - the free version comes with unlimited pages and revisions, 10 megabytes of storage for file attachments, Zip backup and rss feeds.

What it wont do : write stuff for you, or get people to contribute to the wiki. You have to do that yourself.

Suggested Use : Organisations which need to gather a large number of information for their campaigns, can ask their supporters to do the research and add it to a wiki. A wiki can also be used to collect a list of best practices in the activism world.

Advocacy Example : Sourcewatch (http://sourcewatch.org) is a collaborative project, developed through a wiki system, of the Center for Media and Democracy to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. A primary purpose of SourceWatch is documenting the PR and propaganda activities of public relations firms and public relations professionals engaged in managing and manipulating public perception, opinion and policy.

Who Owns It : Pbwiki, Inc., http://pbwiki.com/about.html

Who Owns Your Content : They say “Your stuff is yours; we don't own it when you post it. We don't police you, but if the police tell us to take your stuff down, we will.”

Comments : Your wiki will be password-protected so that only people you invite to edit the wiki can do so.

MySpace
http://www.myspace.com

What it does : MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos internationally. Geared towards individuals who want to post information about themselves on the web.

What it wont do : Not good for representing an organization, though some organizations do use MySpace to post content

Who Owns It : Fox Interactive Media

Suggested Use : Organisations can create their own identity on MySpace, in order to reach out to a young audience.

Advocacy Example : Oxfam America has their own MySpace page http://myspace.com/oxfam and their “network” grew up to 24000 “friends”.

Who Owns Your Content : “After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights... (also) you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content on and through the MySpace Services.”

Privacy Concerns : They are accused of censoring politically sensitive content by Moveon.org. See http://civic.moveon.org/pdf/myspace/thanks.html?id=-4512092-uUhDZM

Comments : -

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com

What it does : Facebook is a social networking website that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Its geared towards people who want to form networks and linkages.

What it wont do : Its not good for representing an organization, unless the aim of your organization is networking.

Suggested Use : Beside the possibility of establishing an identity or creating a dedicated group, organisations can develop small applications, through the Facebook API, that people can add on their pages. These applications can act as questionnaires, donations ask, etc. Facebook allows you to reach constituents that you wouldn't normally.

Advocacy Example : The Stop Climate Chaos coalition has setup a Facebook group to post news, images and give people the ability to interact in a discussion board.

Who Owns It : Facebook, INC

Who Owns Your Content : You have control over your personal information and you only have access to information others want to share

Privacy Concerns : Their policies around data-mining and collection have raised some concerns.

Comments : -