Websites team up for social change

December 18, 2008

Social-networking site MySpace has teamed with Change.org to launch "Ideas for Change in America," a citizen-driven effort to sustain the high level of political involvement generated by the 2008 presidential election.
A platform on the Change.org website lets visitors share ideas about important issues, hold online discussions and vote for the ideas most likely to produce positive change.

A similar forum on the MySpace website, which has about 118 million monthly active users, allows visitors to submit their ideas in video form.

"In his victory speech, President-elect [Barack] Obama talked about his commitment to opening up government, and called for citizens to participate in their own democracy again," Ben Rattray, founder and CEO of Change.org, says in a statement. "Ideas for Change in America answers that call by empowering Americans to get involved in the process of identifying solutions to the most important problems we face."

MySpace, Change.org and their nonprofit partners plan to announce the top 10 rated ideas and deliver them to a representative from the Obama administration on Inauguration Day.

San Francisco-based Change.org is an online network of blogs dedicated to social progress.

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