PR 2.0
by Gil Rosen

The recent turmoil in the middle east has thrown an interesting angle on a new and developing PR play. An organization called GIYUS.ORG has launched a community mobilization client called “Megaphone” which notifies interested members of specific articles relevant to the situation in the Middle East. It then mobilizes them to action in the way of voting (e.g. - if there is an onsite CNN survey etc.) or writing talk backs.After a quick instillation process the client’s ‘toaster’ (the thingy that pops up and down the system trey icon) started notifying me of every related article in the war between Israel and the Hezbollah and urged me to act. As a user I can also participate and report interesting articles to the community, ones I think GIYUS should publish an alert for. They also offer an RSS feed which saves the need to download the Megaphone. This is a thoughtful feature for someone like me, who after a few days of ‘enjoying’ the toaster pop-ups, prefers to receive the notices in my delivery mechanism of choice (Netvibes…love it).

I think Megaphone is a great utility for interest groups who want to mobilize their members to action. Since launching only a week ago, GIYUS has grown approximately 10,000 users. A respectable number by all standards. Like many other 2.0 apps and services Megaphone does not present a quantum leap in technology but similar to del.icio.us and its likes ,it has managed to focus on a specific user (or group in this case) use case and provide flawless mechanism / tools to the job.

Theoretically, Megaphone’s mobilization could have been done only with the RSS feed but that doesn’t seem to be enough. The ingredients that mobilize a group to action comprise of the dedicated website, the reporting tool, the downloadable app and possibly most importantly, the positive psychological ‘involved feeling’ of being part of a community.
This is a strong enough motivation to download a unique news feeder. Yes – I like Netvibes very much but currently I have 94 unread feeds. I treat Netvibes as my news homepage. For that ONE cause I care about, I think Megaphone is a much better conscious appeaser.

I see some similarities between the birth of Megaphone and YouTube. Both were born out of the senseless chain (A.K.A - FW: FW: FW) emails. Where’s there is a need, there’s a solution…
P.R 2.0 is here to stay and Megaphone have set a high standard. I wonder what other services will be born out of the FW: FW: FW: trend…hold on….I’m on to something…back soon

Gil Rosen
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