PRESS RELEASE:
Change.org and MySpace Join Forces to Launch "Ideas for Change in America"
Unique and Inspiring Program Designed to Help Define Presidential Agenda and Provoke Social Change
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(MARKET WIRE)--Nov 24, 2008 -- Change.org, the leading online platform for social change, and MySpace, the world's premier social network, today announced the launch of "Ideas for Change in America," a groundbreaking citizen-driven effort to help define President-elect Barack Obama's presidential agenda. The campaign is supported by more than a dozen voter mobilization organizations that played an integral role in the record-setting voter turnout, including Declare Yourself, Student PIRGs, Voto Latino, and HeadCount. Media and nonprofit partners include techPresident, Netroots Nation, the Sunlight Foundation, GOOD, and Change Congress.
The 2008 campaign brought unprecedented levels of political participation and excitement, mobilizing millions of new voters. But with election over, the most pressing question has now become: What's next? How can the millions of people inspired by the campaign work with the new administration to create real change?
With the launch of Change.gov earlier this month, President-elect Obama made the first step toward providing the transparency his campaign promised in setting up the Obama Administration. But while Change.gov allows users to submit their stories about the campaign, it does not enable citizens to publicly express their own ideas for how the Obama Administration should advance change or to collaborate in the ways they had become accustomed to during the campaign.
In response, Change.org has created an open platform at www.change.org/ideas that allows anyone to submit an idea for how they would advance change on an issue of importance, discuss ideas with others, and vote on the best ideas from around the country. MySpace has also created a parallel site at www.myspace.com/changedotorg that has the ability to enable nearly 118 million monthly active MySpace users around the globe to directly submit video ideas for the change they would like to see.
"In his victory speech, President-elect Obama talked about his commitment to opening up government, and called for citizens to participate in their own democracy again," said Change.org founder and CEO Ben Rattray. "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."
In the lead-up to Inauguration Day, Change.org, MySpace, and their partners will hold an event in Washington, DC to announce the top 10 rated ideas and deliver them to a representative from the Obama Administration. Change.org and MySpace will also announce a formal nonprofit sponsor for each idea. Each sponsoring nonprofit will then launch a national campaign to mobilize the millions of people on both sites to ensure that each top idea gets the full consideration of the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress.
"During the election millions of MySpace users participated in the campaign like never before through meaningful programs that MySpace developed with the goal of engaging users in the political process," said Lee Brenner, Director of IMPACT & Executive Producer of Political Programming. "We are excited to partner with Change.org to continue this momentum. Ideas for Change in America is an additional tool to enable the MySpace community to continue their active involvement in politics and in making an impact post the election."
About Change.org:
Change.org is an online hub and media network for social issues and collective action. The San Francisco-based social entrepreneurship venture operates a network of blogs covering more than a dozen major social issues and has partnered with more than 2500 leading nonprofit organizations to provide outlets for powerful action. Change.org was founded by two former classmates from Stanford, Ben Rattray and Mark Dimas, in 2006.
About MySpace
MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc., is the premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering popular culture, and making a positive impact on the world. MySpace has created a connected global community by integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities, and member forums. MySpace's international network includes more than 30 localized community sites in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Latin America, Mexico, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, India, Japan, and New Zealand. Fox Interactive Media is a division of News Corp. (NYSE:NWS - News, NWS.A - News; ASX:NWS - News, NWSLV - News).
Among the top 2000 domains comScore Media Metrix, September 2008. For more information on comScore Networks, please go to www.comscore.com.
About MySpace IMPACT
MySpace IMPACT's goal is to empower users to make a difference in the world by building partnerships and programs focused on voter education, voter registration, and voter turnout. To educate MySpace users about candidates and issues, the company teamed up with MTV in the primary season to produce a series of highly interactive candidate town hall events geared toward young and first-time voters called the MySpace/MTV Presidential Dialogues; partnered with NBC News and msnbc.com to deliver high-quality election coverage and citizen journalism opportunities to users through a hub called Decision08; and worked with the Commission on Presidential Debates to power MyDebates.org, the official online companion to the Presidential Debates. MySpace IMPACT's online voter registration is powered by the non-profit nonpartisan organization Declare Yourself
Contacts:
Change.org
Ben Rattray
ben@change.org
202-253-1288
MySpace:
Jamie Schumacher
jschumacher@myspace.com
310-969-7087
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