The sophistication of the Center for American Progress’ social media advocacy
I got a chance to spend time with some of the players at the Center for American Progress who run its various online media platforms. Over at the Next Web I’ve profiled some of the sophisticated campaigns they’re running:
Faiz Shakir has been the editor of Think Progress for several years and oversees a staff of nearly 20 people. He told me in a recent phone interview that having an institutional blog “churn out propaganda” wouldn’t have succeeded. “You need to be able to speak as a voice of a progressive movement,” he said. “And that means putting out content that isn’t necessarily tied to the institution and sometimes getting out ahead of the institution when there is some need to do so.”
If the senior people at CAP were at first skeptical as to whether this would work, the success of Think Progress over the years would have relieved any fears. The site gets several hundred thousand readers a day and has an email list — called The Progress Report — with over 100,000 subscribers. What first started as a blog with only a handful of writers now sports a team of investigative journalists and researchers who are producing original reporting that will rival most major news organizations.
You can follow me on Twitter, fan me on Facebook, or go ahead and hire me.
Much has been written about the anecdotal horror stories told by business owners who have been the unfortunate victims of unfair online reviews. More often than not, either Yelp or Amazon’s customer reviews are singled out in these tales of woe, and it’s hard not to develop at least some sympathy for those business owners who must watch from the sidelines, unable to take much action.
In 2010, JESS3 
