The social networking ideas that Chris Hughes and his college roomate Mark Zuckerberg worked on at Harvard have become a revolutionary platform remaking communications and business around the globe.
Now Hughes, who is based in New York, haslaunched the Beta version of Jumo, a social network that hopes to connect individuals working for global change. He described his vision for Jumo on the company blog.
I have a problem: it’s hard to find smart people doing meaningful work on the issues I care about. I’m sure they’re out there, but I can’t find them.
Occasionally, if I do find them, a second problem arises: it’s hard to keep up with them. As fast as they enter my consciousness, they leave it. For all of our fancy tech ingenuity, it’s a marvel to me that it’s so hard to connect to the things I care about.
When I founded Jumo earlier this year, I had simple vision: use networking technology to connect individuals and organizations working for global change. I wanted to build a network to help everyday people find, follow, and support those working day in and day out to make change happen in our communities and in regions around the world.
The site’s setup is intuitive for any Facebooker. Clicking on the tab marked HIV/AIDS from the Jumo homepage takes users to an issue page where they can follow a newsfeed about work related to the disease, join groups combating the problem and connect with other users working on this issue.
Malcolm Gladwell set off a heated debate recently when he wrote that social networks undermined real activism by making it easy for people to support a cause without committing to any real-world activity. Perhaps Jumo, which uses social networking to connect activists time, money and skills with ongoing projects, can help to disprove Gladwell’s argument.
bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper
