Change.org

Change.org, Inc. is a for profit corporation whose businesses include the sale and provision of list-building services.^[1] It was launched on February 7, 2007^[2] by current CEO Ben Rattray and Mark Dimas. Commentators initially compared it to other less-than-successful civil reform-oriented social networking platforms,^[3] but it has claimed a number of victories related to its petitions.^[4] They also work with over 1000 of the largest nonprofits in the world, boasting a team of hundreds of journalists and organizers throughout the entire world.^{[citation needed]}

In 2008, the organization partnered with MySpace to create an index of crowdsourced ideas for implementation by the incoming presidency of Barack Obama,^[5] drawing comparisons to similar approaches by change.gov.

In 2010, Change.org helped to inaugurate Blog Action Day. Change.org has had more than 100 victories since launching their campaign tools. On December 29, 2010 Change.org recorded its largest petition to date titled "South Africa: Declare 'Corrective Rape' a Hate-Crime." It has received 141,317 signatures as of January 23, 2010, with a goal of 150,000 set by Luleki Sizwe a non-profit organization.

In 2011, Change.org claimed it was the subject of a distributed denial of service attack by "Chinese hackers",^[6] and that the alleged attack was apparently related to its petition to the Chinese government to release artist Ai Weiwei.^[7]

The website makes revenue in part by selling the email addresses of those who sign petitions.^[8]

See also

• Avaaz.org
• iPetitions
• Care2

References

1. ^ "We're Hiring!". http://www.webcitation.org/5xVzcwdJ2. 
2. ^ Nick Gonzalez (February 7, 2007). "Social Networking For Change(.org)". TechCrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2007/02/07/social-networking-for-change/. 
3. ^ Sonny Cloward (03/20/2007 - 10:41am). "Will Change.org change...well, anything?". NTEN. http://www.nten.org/blog/2007/03/20/will-change-org-change-well-anything. 
4. ^ ""Victorious" petitions". Change.org. http://www.change.org/petitions?order=victories. 
5. ^ Sarah Lai Stirland (November 25, 2008). "Change.org Crowdsources An Agenda For Incoming Administration". Wired. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/11/changeorg-crowd/. 
6. ^ Branigan, Tania (April 20, 2011). "Ai Weiwei campaign website 'victim of Chinese hackers'". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/20/ai-weiwei-campaign-website-chinese-hackers. 
7. ^ Joffe-Walt, Benjamin. "Chinese Hackers Attack Change.org Platform in Reaction to Ai Weiwei Campaign". Change.org. http://blog.change.org/2011/04/chinese-hackers-attack-change-org-platform-in-reaction-to-ai-weiwei-campaign/. 
8. ^ CCourtney E. Martin. "'You Are the NOW of Now!' The Future of (Online) Feminism". The Nation, 11/2/2011.

External links

• Change.org