Continuing on last week's discussion about Causes leaving MySpace, TechSoup's own Amy has written an interesting guest post on Sean Stannard-Stockton's Tactical Philanthropy blog. Amy discusses the Causes fallout as well as Ideablob's sudden disappearance. She gets at some of the big questions nonprofits should be asking about the tools we're using. It's definitely worth the read.

We can count our Twitter followers or how many people have commented on our blog post, or could have counted the number of supporters on Causes or voters on Ideablob, but that doesn't mean we connect with them. Now that Causes removed itself, its content, and any related data from MySpace, organizations cannot connect with their supporters who were using Causes. Ideablob participants are locked out from seeing any comments or feedback on their ideas. The fact that access to data, whether it's supporters' email addresses, tracking actions taken, or anything else, is instantly gone should be a big alert bell to those working in a "networked" way via social media to grow their community. To connect with supporters, organizations and individuals working on projects will need to be sure that data gets back to them. How are you encouraging your supporters all over the web to connect with you directly? For example, when you post a message (whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, or even Change.org) telling your supporters that you're ramping up for some big news, a new project or something else, include a link where they can sign up with you to be on the email/announcement list. When supporters sign a petition or take action on your organization's behalf in social media platforms, include "thank you" and "learn more" links wherever possible that link to ways to connect directly with your organization, ensuring the contact information is in your database, not just Facebook's.

Of course, that data - ostensibly ours - doesn't disappear when a company stops using it; there's just no way for us to access it after a service has stopped running, and there's often no convenient way to access it beforehand. What if nonprofits en masse demanded an "export all data" feature for any online service we use to interact with our supporters?

Related

• Causes Leaves MySpace: Should We Care?
• Do You Know Where Your Data Is?

Photo: Frederick D. Perry, CC license

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