You may have heard about yet another Facebook founder's pet project which launched this week. Jumo is a new platform for people and organization's to connect and for the user to have one place they can go for content about issues they are interested in. I would encourage you to take a spin and see what you think.
Several prominent nonprofit professionals have toured this new website in the past few days to see what the user experience is like and figure out how they plan on using it. The response amongst nonprofit social media professionals seems to be mixed to negative.
I am trying to be careful not to be overly critical about the site too early as it still has the "beta" tag on it and being a developer of an online tool myself, I know how it feels to put your new baby out for all the world to critique. :)
But, I am disappointed by the concept of the idea versus the hype. I agree with Beth Kanter and Amy Sample Ward in that I fail to see how Jumo is going to take the next step to inspire actions versus very passively encouraging people to connect with nonprofits on a national platform.
In my opinion, Jumo is not forecasting the trend very well and is a lagging website instead of a leading one. I believe that the combination of social networking and e-philanthropy will become far more locally focused in the coming years. Sure, building online portals into the philanthropic world is noble but as a professional fundraiser I don't believe that a website like Jumo will "bring people up the philanthropy ladder" as Beth Kanter says. That task belongs to people and organizations that are close to you and influence you offline. Where is the relationship building component of Jumo? It doesn't exist because it misses the offline, trust-building component that nonprofits need to achieve missions and affect change.
Community Shares new My Colorado Project is a different model entirely. Think local, think incremental, and band together with both on and offline.
We'd love to know what you think, please consider leaving a comment. Through dialog we can reach the best solutions.
I agree with all you say. Just another vacuous window that will remain largely empty as it doesn't offer much more than other platforms. And a laggy one at that.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly doesn't seem to offer anything new to build on or link into meatspace, local or personal recommendations.