Planting Liberally

Today's series on new software progressives introduces an idea I've been kicking around for a couple of days: a social networking site for liberal entrepreneurs. (And yes, this is a bit meta.) The idea is to put together liberal entrepreneurs who want to start new progressive ventures, so that they can share resources, tips, best practices, etc. There are already some email lists for doing just that - for example, Blogs United, the DFA State Leaders list, and Progressive Exchange - but they lack persistence. If I go to the home page of Blogs United, for instance, it's frustratingly difficult to answer a question such as "what kind of hosting provider should I use for my blog?". There are some more persistent caches of resources, such as the New Progressive Coalition's list of resources for progressive organizations, but these lack a social dimension which is crucial to effective recommendations. Most people want to ask the question "what kind of hosting provider would my friends suggest I use for my blog?" A Social Network for Progressive Entrepreneurs What I am thinking of as a solution to this problem is a simple social networking platform for liberal entrepreneurs, which could be of assistance to people trying to start: - grassroots civic groups, like DFA chapters - blogs or other simple online communities (including Yahoo Groups or Ning groups) - progressive organizations, ala Media Matters or the Oregon Bus Project - businesses serving the progressive movement I see these four types of organizations as fundamentally distinct from each other, in the sense that the kinds of resources which blogs need are different then the kind of resources which businesses serving the progressive movement need. But I could be wrong about that, and it could be that these distinctions are a bit arbitrary. The second component to this system would be a resource directory with a commenting/rating system attached. Individuals could submit, comment on, and rate resources of the following types: - How-to guides - Service providers - Online communities (blogs, email lists, social networks) - Training opportunities - Funding opportunities - Books, articles, and blog posts Each resource would be tagged by subject and explicitly targeted at one or more of the four organization types listed above. The third component to this system would be a resource discovery application. Individuals could browse for resources using tag clouds, or through searches using some combination of the following criteria: - Targeted organization - Resource type - Recommendations from friends - Recommendations overall A "pipe dream" component to this system would be a project-development application. This would be implemented, initially at first, as a kind of wiki. Each member could create a new project, describe what he or she wants to do with it, and blog about the project from time to time. Other members could join the project, chime in with answers to questions in the blog post, or otherwise help out on the project. Earning money Now for the money part. The most obvious solution to paying for this system is through sponsorships or advertising. Service providers have an obvious stake in promoting themselves on the system, and some of them have deep pockets. I can easily imagine a company like Convio - which is fairly wealthy but is liable to get mediocre customer ratings - trying to advertise its way into a better impression. The second solution is to incorporate some kind of consulting arrangement into this system. Some progressive entrepreneurs will want to find answers which the site's search engine, for some reason, just can't seem to answer. The solution for them is to pay a small fee in order to ask a question of the site's "Progressive Entrepreneur Expert". That expert would review the question and answer it; in order to minimize the site's liability, we could guarantee 10 - 15 minutes of research services, or something like that. More complex consulting arrangements could also be organized, of course. A final solution is to integrate the site with a lending or funding circle like prosper.com. Simply put, the social networking site would allow individuals to try and raise funds - whether through loans or grants - using prosper (or paypal, or whomever)'s transaction network. The social networking site takes a small cut from the top, and earns another revenue stream. How to do it (some early ideas) I've tried looking into putting together a quick and dirty version of this idea on Ning, but it turns out that Ning isn't nearly good enough for this. There are plenty of for-pay Ning knockoffs out there, but I'd like to start something cheap, quick and dirty instead. I'm thinking about putting it together in PeopleAggregator if I ever get a spare weekend. We'll see. In the meanwhile, if you get excited about this idea and want to turn it around, let me know about it! Full disclosure: As the owner of a service provider (I run a web development company called Lightbulb First Consulting, LLC), I stand to gain financially from this idea. Full credit: Deborah Schneider suggested lots of interesting ideas for this piece, including a reference to the Progressive Exchange and Prosper.