Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman have written an important new book called Networked: The New Social Operating System. As described on the authors’ website, it draws heavily on data accumulated by the Pew Research Center.

Networked explores the convergence of three technologies — broadband, mobile connectivity, and social networking — and consumer adaptation to them.

In essence, each of us can now be a personal media company … using these tools to connect and share stories.

The term Rainie and Wellman use to describe the new social operating system is “networked individualism”. As they say, this system “liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks.”

“Networked individualism” poses a challenge to the huge segment of nonprofits (including all advocacy groups) whose core purpose, when you really pare it all back, is to filter and aggregate mission-critical information, form communities of interest around that information, and guide us on how to act upon it effectively.

By itself, internet access started the process of undermining the filtering and mediating role of organizations (and ‘gatekeeper’ media), empowering individuals to independently both find and create information/content. But then add mobile connectivity, which by definition makes access to information (and sharing of it) ubiquitous and instant … and even location-specific. And then add social nets, which have catapulted forward the ease of connecting and sharing … and thereby have popularized and democratized doing so.

Information-based nonprofits will need to re-invent themselves and re-confirm the role they play for their empowered members, donors and supporters.

How do they add value or meet a need that you and I can’t address ourselves as networked individuals?

What’s a poor advocacy group to do? Many will think the challenge is merely using these tools to raise money. However, many might find that the real challenge is even more life-threatening!

Tom

P.S. The authors will be developing their ideas further via this blog.