This really began back at the StartupEmpire conference on November 14th, 2008 in the midst of Howard Lindzon’s StockTwits presentation. Today, VenTwits (^VenTwits) is live as a the first property in a series of initiatives to help things happen and create the world we want.
Developed by Shouldless Inc. (^shldlss), VenTwits is a site for people building things they care about. We believe there is something special about communications that happen in public, 140 characters at a time. It seems to encourage a unique breadth and practicality of engagement such as the #hohoto party in Toronto. #hohoto emerged through Twitter (see SlideShare preso) and within 18 days of the first mention was sold-out to over 600 people, raised $25,000 in cash and 2 tonnes of food for Toronto’s Daily Bread Foodbank. All this without any one leader or cash investment – rather it leveraged parallel leadership from over a dozen people and the contributions of countless more. What if we could leverage what happened there?
Well, VenTwits is the beginning of seeing where this can go. Already in the first day, we’ve had people visiting from around the world to see what’s going on, some of whom quickly adopted the new tags and jumped right in. We are already working on another property that will come at this from a different angle as well. Once launched, we want to see how people use them to help things happen and with a few months under our belts we’re planning on open-sourcing our core code and firing up the Social Venture Commons (^svc).
The Social Venture Commons is being established as a non-profit organization dedicated to coordinating the development and application of this concept for the purposes of social change and public benefit. If what we believe about this mode of peer-produced organization is true, then we have a lot to give. If we’re wrong, we’ll have learned a lot from trying.
In the past two months, I’ve met some extraordinary people – all through Twitter of course – that have come together to make this happen. As we’re building we’re experimenting with how to peer-produce an organization, how we create and measure value, and how we deliver public benefit.
We’re inspired by the potential of people coming together and contributing to the creation of things they care about. We believe that we are building uniquely helpful ways that help that happen. And we believe, that together, we can use it to create the world we want.
Please jump in and give it a try. And if you have any feedback or want to get in touch – please do.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=2c302289-11bb-499f-9ccc-c8dcc6a63693)
Congratulations on this experiment, this is a great idea, and what I have seen of the implementation (web service) is also very good. I am very curious to see what comes out…
Thanks Marc – so are we!
I have a sneaking suspicion this is a very cool and exciting project, and am grateful for a post that starts to describe what this is all about. I need more help, though. Am I right in thinking this is something that expands the whole hashtag phenomenon to something MUCH more powerful? That encourages a variety of hashtags used in a variety of ways that allow you to find and connect with conversations you wouldn't otherwise know existed? Would you be interested in adding a sentence or two that provides that kind of description (but accurately) to this overview, or is part of the intent here a process of self-discovery and engagement that a more literal description would squelch?
Thanks for fielding the questions. I'm truly *very* intrigued and excited about where this will go!
Christine thanks for the comment. I'd say yes and VenTwits is about 2 levels of tags:
^ indicates a venture: a risky or daring undertaking or journey (like a startup)
! Indicates a thread: a conversation related to a venture or ventures
The comination and exploration through these and through the individuals who contribute I think will become increasingly interesting. I also believe that something in the nature of default public 140 character communication is that it leads to broader more pracitcal engagement than other media
We'll be getting more guidance up on the site along with more tweaks and features. I think, for all of us, this really about experimenting and seeing where it goes. Like twitter I suspect our experiences will change with how we use it.
Thanks again for following and contibuting!
Hello,
How does one learn more about what you are doing with ^svc. I run and am associated with many social ventures, and a commons sounds very interesting. Looking for a summary more concretely defined than trying to wrap my head around a ventwits stream right now.
Even an email would work great.
My site is linked to this comment via my name if you want to see where im coming from.
Thanks for the time. Viva London, Viva Western!
Jason – checkout http://VenTwits.com/ventures/^svc – i'll post up some more
content there. And you can get my by email at michael at svcommons.com.
Hello,
How does one learn more about what you are doing with ^svc. I run and am associated with many social ventures, and a commons sounds very interesting. Looking for a summary more concretely defined than trying to wrap my head around a ventwits stream right now.
Even an email would work great.
My site is linked to this comment via my name if you want to see where im coming from.
Thanks for the time. Viva London, Viva Western!
Jason – checkout http://VenTwits.com/ventures/^svc – i'll post up some more
content there. And you can get my by email at michael at svcommons.com.