Hot Commodity

The Point is a community website for organizing group actions. They basically help people congregate around the issues they care about and combine forces to make things happen. Campaigns (group actions) on The Point are all based on the “tipping point” model (great book by the way) where participants take action to solve their problem, but only once a critical mass of people have committed such that the combined force will “tip” the issue. This makes it different from typical fundraising campaigns because no one has to act until it is confirmed that enough people are committed to make a difference. Campaigns range from minor issues like “Facebook must allow users to choose the color of their profile or else we will all send messages to their PR staff if 50,000 people join this campaigns” to movements to rebuild community parks, raise funding to produce a musical, boycott an oil company once enough people join to force them to reduce profits, and even move the Super Bowl from Sunday to Saturday (that’s just crazy).

The concept behind The Point is really interesting in and of itself but the website is also very well designed and has several neat functions. One such feature allows you to set your relationship to the “target” of the campaign; for example, if you were trying to get AT&T to do something you might set your relationship as “customer” and then other AT&T customers would be notified of your campaign. Continuing with the “network” theme that the tipping point implies, they also have a “6-degrees” type of “supply chain” feature that maps the relationship between different companies. So say that company X sells to paper mill Y which sells to consumer-accessible stationery store Z. You can tell The Point which companies you interact with directly, and they’ll tell you all the ones you’re supporting indirectly.

Andrew Mason (the founder) is quite the visionary. He believes that when effectively aggregated the consumer’s purchasing power is ultimate power. In the long run he figures The Point could be a tool for individuals to, in effect, regulate corporate policy by wielding their pocketbooks. No need for government. “This is true democracy- this is what America’s all about! And the efficiency of the process, I think, is a win for individuals and companies alike,” he says.

The website just launched in late 2007 so it’s going to be a while before we know how effective it is, but I really like the concept. They will, of course, have to be responsible for quite a bit of content moderation as I’m sure there will be people who try to start inappropriate campaigns like “I’ll run around the block naked if 5 people give me $1” or threatening ones like “I’ll put a bomb in the White House if 20 people agree to help me” (hopefully writing that doesn’t get me in trouble). People may also have difficulties in structuring campaigns that address the issue or problem they really want to attack (see On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B).

Overall though it’s a great example of the overarching theme of how the internet is enabling people to connect without the need of a “middle man” or “moderator”, a role that I see as quickly going extinct in several different spaces. But more on that another time- for now, I’ve made my point.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Company Zeroes and Heroes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.