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"Have you been successful using MySpace and if so, how?"
Chris Burley: Similar to other groups, we recommend a site badge to permit our users to help endorse one of our campaigns. In particular, this helps us conscript activists to stop airborne gunning in Alaska. It's far too early on to tell, but some of the early consequences are heartening: As of last month, about 116 actions for this campaign were straightforwardly attributable to our system of about 1,100 friends. In terms of sheer statistics, these are clearly much lower than we produce with our direct email campaigns, but the conversion rate is hopeful.
Tim Fullerton: The MySpace page has been tremendously victorious. In a little over 10 months, our page has over 6,000 acquaintances. We also have had several hundred new signups to our Oxfam America email list from citizens who were MySpace friends first. There have also been more than a few requests to volunteer with Oxfam from areas of the country where our base is not the strongest--Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia, for instance. It has also motivated traffic to the Oxfam America homepage. Some months it is a top-ten referrer.
On the other hand, fundraising on MySpace is extremely complicated to do. I would recommend looking at MySpace as a tool to drive sponsorship support and volunteers.
Carie Lewis: We're still working on adding our newsletter signup to our page, but people have been really responsive with our advocacy campaigns. Whenever we want people to take action on something, we post a bulletin with a direct link to the action on our Web site.
After our friends take action, they re-post the bulletin for their friends. We just started a group for one of our campaigns, and plan to do the same for each campaign that we have. This is a great way to target people interested in and passionate about our specific issues, and communicate with them to take action.
Did you have any concerns before launching social network pages and if so, what were they?
Carie Lewis: We had resource concerns regarding care and feeding of the site and monitoring content presented under our organizational brad. For example, [we were concerned about] "adult" friends, divisive political issues, candidate messaging, and so on.
Tim Fullerton: Initially, we were concerned that we would not have the time to maintain the page, but we've learned that it does not take very much to maintain the site and the return has been well worth it.
Chris Burley: We had concerns about people who disagree with us making inappropriate comments. But we approve all comments before they are posted, with a short turnaround time.
We also have problems with inappropriate videos being posted; but our large network of friends and supporters are great about making us aware of them, and then we contact the appropriate authorities at MySpace about the content.
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