The internet lost a major figure in the person of Aaron Swartz on Friday January 11. Swartz, who was facing a possible 50 years in prison and $4 million fine for downloading the contents of JSTOR from an MIT computer, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old. Swartz is credited with co-authoring RSS1.0 when he was 14 and being one of the co-founders of Reddit, but his most important contributions to the internet have been his staunch commitment to the free dissemination of information and along with this, the protection of privacy. Swartz was a creator of Tor2Web, a founder of Open Access as well as the Demand Progress movement that successfully fought the Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA). I spoke to Carlos Gomez, who has been involved with the MIT hacker culture since the 1980’s, more specifically about Aaron Swartz and what he stood for.

Dady Chery
Co-Editor in Chief, News Junkie Post

Dady Chery. Aaron Swartz is credited with Tor2Web. Would you explain this contribution? How important is it?

Carlos Gomez. Tor2web is an anonymizer based on a volunteer network. It works as follows. Every request for a web page requires an addressee and a return address, and you need this return address, because the page requested needs to know where to send the information. So how do you get anonymity? Let’s say you are writing a snail mail requesting a document. The upper left corner has the return address; the middle of envelope has the delivery address. You obviously need these two pieces of information. So this envelope goes to a postman who picks it up, the local post office, a central office, etc., and gets passed along many times before it reaches its final destination. Without opening the envelope, anyone who handles it knows where it’s going to and where it came from. Suppose instead, you took the letter, put the “TO” and “FROM” addresses inside it and encrypted the whole thing, and then put that letter in an envelope that had the address of a trusted person instead who knew how to decode it. That person could open the letter, decode the TO and FROM addresses, put it in a new envelope, encrypt it again and forward it. And this could be done any number of times, until the final address is that of the final recipient. Each recipient would only know the previous and next person in the chain. The Tor browser performs the electronic equivalent of this manual encoding/decoding/shuffling of envelopes automatically and transparently for any user of TOR.

DC. How do you know that Tor itself can be trusted?

CG. The TOR software is open-source, meaning that every line of the software is published and open for inspection. While you yourself may not be enough of a geek to verify personally that the software works as intended, you can rely on a large network of highly paranoid geeks who have already minutely examined this code for you. This is in sharp contrast to Internet Explorer or Safari, the default browsers that come preloaded in Windows and Apple computers, respectively. These proprietary browsers are totally black-box, and could be forwarding every syllable directly to the CIA, for all you know. The principles of open source, most eloquently described by Richard Matthew Stallman (rms),  are a foundation of free information. People who use software should know its contents and be able to share it and modify it for their personal preference. When you buy a car or anything else, you are entitled to modify it any way you want. You might void the warranty, but you’ll never get arrested.

DC. But if you publish the source, doesn’t this mean that anyone can steal it?

CG. Yes. The same way anyone can plagiarize “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Whoever heard of a work of literature covered under copyright being encoded to keep people from plagiarizing it? It is outrageous that software can be covered by copyright at all. Software is not literature. It is much more like an invention and is more aptly covered by patent law. Of course, patents also require that the principles of any invention be completely explained and accessible. Before patents, inventors used to protect their intellectual property by simply keeping the principles of operation secret. This solution inhibits the growth of engineering knowledge. Patent law is a contract in which the public grants an inventor monopoly rights for a limited term in exchange for a full disclosure of the principles of the invention. Under patent law, every competent individual is ready to exploit the technology as soon as the patent expires, enriching and extending it to the benefit of the general public. It is expected that during the monopoly period, the inventor will be able to recover all of his costs of development plus a reasonable profit. Intellectual property protection of closed-source software tries to have it both ways: they get the protected monopoly, yet the public does not receive the full access to technology that is the public’s side of the bargain.

DC. Some say that Swartz’ opposition to SOPA/PIPA made him some very powerful enemies who felt that he was encouraging the theft of their intellectual property.

CG. SOPA/PIPA was meant to protect rights that corporations should not be allowed to have. Copyright laws were developed to protect the livelihood of authors — not the corporations that buy the right to an author’s work. By this reasoning, there is no sense to a copyright outliving its author, since no amount of incentive would entice that author to further efforts. Furthermore, copyrights should be held by real persons, never by corporations, which should have to license the copyright from a living person. The rise of digital media was never envisioned by the original authors of copyright law, and the control of pliant legislators by powerful media conglomerates have led to extensions of copyright law that are totally inconsistent with the original intent of these laws. The only justification that serves the public for a legal protection of “intellectual property” is that this protection ultimately increases, rather than inhibits, access to information.

DC. Aaron Swartz got into legal trouble for downloading JSTOR documents from an MIT computer. What is JSTOR, and do you think this information should be public?

CG. JSTOR is a repository of classic literature from a large variety of fields. This information is typically scanned because it predates digital publishing. Much of this literature is from publicly-funded research. Scientific publications differ from other literature in that they are meant to be applied to future research. In the case of publicly-funded research, taxpayers cannot derive the full benefit of what they have paid for unless they get unfettered access to it. The journals that claim ownership did not pay for the research, did not pay for the authors to write the papers, and did not even pay for the reviews. So their sole, extremely dubious, claim to the ownership of papers is based on their ability to coerce some poor sucker into signing their work over to them for free: the suckers in questions being the authors, the reviewers, and the tax-paying public. Why should we pay to have anybody, including somebody, say, in Ghana, who could not afford the extremely expensive journal fees, be able to get this freely? Science is completely global. It is in the taxpayer’s benefit, not only to have this information available to other taxpayers, but also to have it available to everybody. Another scientist in some unexpected place could be the one who takes the research to the next level. The more eyeballs, the more minds get access, the more robustly science develops. Pure research is founded on the free exchange of information. Anything less than total access means that everyone is being cheated. Period. The taxpaying public, authors and reviewers give up their intellectual property rights specifically so that the information can be made most widely available and applied. Usurpation of these property rights by the journals is theft.

Stallman, who is known for the phrase “Information wants to be free!” carried the concept of free information well beyond software. He invented the concept of “copyleft”, which is a copyright that is taken, not to restrict access to intellectual property but instead to guarantee free access by preempting corporate copyright claims. Swartz’s open access movement basically calls for scientists to take copylefts on their publications rather than surrender their copyright to the journals.

DC. Any thoughts about MIT’s role in Swartz’ troubles?

CG. It is ironic that MIT the institution is so hostile to the ideals of hacker culture, with which many creative people who work for MIT, including Stallman and web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, are so closely associated. MIT people have been absolutely instrumental to hacker culture, whose contributions have greatly enhanced MIT’s reputation. Project Athena, for example, which brings academic online courses to the whole world for free is an honor to MIT and a great example of free exchange of information.

DC. What do you think would be a fitting tribute to Aaron Swartz?

CG. Amend the copyright law to say:

1. Any publicly funded research, past or present, is ineligible for copyright protection.

2. Software is not covered under copyright law but properly falls under patent law as an invention.

Read the complete text of Aaron Swartz’ Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, in his own eloquent words.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Sage Ross. Photograph two by Mike Licht and photographs five, six and seven by Donkey Hotey.

I can hear him now: “Come one, come all. Enter my parking lot and spend as much time as you want and it is free.” So says the P.T. Barnum of cyberspace. Welcome to the biggest parking lot in the world. At one time that parking lot grew so big it threatened to eat itself. Entering it is free, unusual for a parking lot. Once inside behind its flimsy fence, you can basically park where you want. So, welcome. There is no obligation, at least on the surface, to do anything but lie there like a dead fish. You can, if you desire, promote the self you want others to see. Parking spots are available to everyone. When you take your spot, the parking lot owner ask nothing of you except, and this is the main hitch, that it allows them, though in secret, to gather everything there is to know about you and more. It is the hidden information they want as you deeply implant yourself in a cozy place on their site. Of course, they always do this without you knowing what they, the proprietors, are doing. Parking free in a crowded city is everyone’s dream. It is something people are unwilling to give up without a fight.

Yes, parking is free. If you wish, staying in your self-designated spot is yours forever. Saying what you want is also free as long as you abide by the rules of socially acceptable conduct. As you maneuver your way into your permanent parking spot, you think, this is terrific — so far, so good. But wait. Are you sure this is as easy as it looks? It is fun. You can post pictures of yourself and others in your life or discuss things about your life. Mostly, everything posted on the site is fleeting. Here today. Gone tomorrow. But your friends are permanent. What a relief. To be friendless would be horrible, especially in the tough world in which we live. If you delve deeply into your parking space, everything you posted is there for the taking, for the seeing, for the reliving, if you want.

You feel so good about your place in the parking lot, that you never want the experience to end. You want this fairy tale communication to last forever. But, wait there is a catch. There is always a  catch. The people who own and run the parking lot want to make money off your back from all the public and private information they have been collecting from the moment you drive onto to their site. When you got your parking space you, in your naivete never thought you would have to pay for anything. Surprise. That is not enough to make them  rich. And the rich only want to get richer. They decide to sell stock in the lot. The sale fails miserably. People who park apparently do not want to invest in the land they sit on. They do not want the free ride ever to end. Outside investors flee. The stock tumbles into the land of the negative.

The way to get big money out of the parking arena is to sell advertising on a variety of platforms. It seems that the parking lot owners are having difficulty getting advertisers to buy space on the many mobile devices in the marketplace. Mobile devices only work when people vacate their parking space. If this seems simplistic, it is. Mainly all the people who park for free do not want to spend their money, let alone their time and energy to avail themselves of the advertising already present on every available inch of the parking lot that is now a huge multi-level parking garage with no limit to how big it can grow. Growth does not always translate into cash.

Those who park free are fickle. They are the same as teenagers who fall in and out of love at the drop of a pixel. There are other parking lots and garages everywhere in cyberspace. Most are much smaller than the one I am describing. They are for the taking or using, whatever the preference of the explorer. They will grow incrementally only if they fit a lemming-like need or they will disappear if their standards are too high or too demanding. After all, if your friends are occupying a new parking space, you should too, if you want to remain friends. As an aside, do you know that an early meaning of friend had as its base the word love? Do we really love all our friends? I think not, but that is for another essay at another time.

The other day the main proprietor of the parking lot said that people have been too quick to condemn his plans for the future of the world. His world is one that  never stops moving. Being stationary is evil and cuts down on his revenue. It is a world in which he wants his parking spaces always full to increase his revenue. He says he wants to make the world in which we live and beyond into a “more open and connected place.” One billion spaces are not enough for his vision. He want everyone to occupy a slot in his parking lot. He is a dreamer whose thoughts border on arrogance. We know that ambition is great. Yet a question remains. Will the person who spends his or life embedded on what he or she believes is the turf owned by them, pony up and pay the price for parking now and into the future? There is no guarantee that those who occupy his space, especially in the fluid world in  which we now live, will buy into his dream.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Lars K. Flem.

Think about how one connects with others through all the wires that fill our lives. This is not about why people connect, whether they should connect, or that connecting is good or bad for society. I am not against wiring. Wiring is necessary to a life well lived, especially in the digital age. For some, it is probably more important than eating or sleeping or other mutually desired activities. However, sadly we have become the wires that control how we live.

In our increasingly complex world, it is easy to distance oneself from reality because of all the manual and virtual connections we make. We rarely take into account how we actually connect, person to person. I often wonder about the truth of connecting with people, places and things given the power that wires have over us. Because of the wiring in our homes, offices, schools and public places, we like to think we are together, yet we are alone in a complicated world tethered to an outsized electrical construct that can, and sometimes does, collapse before our eyes if the plug fails, intentionally or accidentally. Then what will we do? What can we do?

Understand that I am not talking about major power outages caused by runaway nature. When these occur, all bets are off. Nothing works. Survival is more important than seeing your email, getting a Tweet, accessing Facebook. The grid often collapses.

No substitute exists that will connect us when that happens. Wi-Fi helps in these situations, but it does not fully replace the wires that rule us.

In their advertising, some companies are suggesting they have the answer to survival in the wired age if you subscribe to their services. A new commercial running on television pushes the need for speed and reliability for computers, phones and the Internet. It shows people happily engaging with their appliances and suddenly the power goes off. Faces droop. Darkness. Then magically, the power returns and because the people are using the advertised brand, they get what they want faster. Everyone is happy. Faces actually light up and life goes on, seemingly better than before the untimely blackout.

Look at how everything you need and want in life needs an electrical outlet to function. Recently The New York Times ran a good natured article about a man of a certain age describing how he did not recognize where he lived because wires were everywhere where once they were not. He put a best face on the change in his life, realizing there was nothing he could do about all the gadgets his children and grandchildren were using. A friend described to me something similar about life in her summer place.

From almost no devices in their home, suddenly her house guests had more devices than you could count everywhere plugged into every outlet in nearly every room. Her many guests often sat around, each in a world of his or her own alone, unblinkingly tied to the apparatus in front of them, not speaking to anyone else.

As ordinary citizens, we have no control over the wires in our lives and how they dictate who we are now. No doubt they will continue to affect who we are into the future. Even though we may think we are wireless by using Wi-Fi, or subscribing to the Cloud, in reality, we never are completely free of wires. Though radio waves work their magic with Wi-Fi, we ultimately must connect to where wires exist.

I went online to find the number of wires in an average home or apartment. It was impossible to find an answer. I did learn that wires are everywhere, in ways we never thought possible. They are either hiding or always in plain sight. They have various colors. They are short or long depending on what they connect. The computer hook-up in my home office must have over a hundred feet of wires. I am not exaggerating. They are necessary, first to make sure I am connected me to the world I sometimes inhabit – the Web.

Those wires also link my phones, my TV and the Internet. So, yes. This applies to me to some extent. But, still. Wires of all colors and sizes are changing how we live. If they do not affect you, when you think about it, you must realize they do. They do my life, without any doubt, because if I loosen one or pull one out of its socket or a plug-in from its hub, if too much dust lands on a connection, my life changes in an instant. Until I locate the trouble, I reach a near panic state. Once I discover the problem, all is again right with my world.

The need for all this power using wires was not evident when computers, television, smart phones and tablets became part of our lives. I am not advocating a return to wood burning stoves and kerosene lanterns. Learn to use the electricity flowing in and out of your life. Do not allow disappointment to color how you live when the grid collapses from overuse or perhaps, poor wiring. Be strong when disaster strikes. Someday, we might be able to virtually wire our brains in a way that eliminates real wires. At least, that is what futurists see. Then what?

Editor’s Note: All photographs from the United States National Archives.

I first noticed something amiss when in Paris some years ago I watched four people sit down at a table near me at an outdoor café. They were young, probably in their twenties, nicely dressed and chatting away happily. As they sat, each took from their pocket a cell phone and placed it in the middle of the table where they were sitting. I thought for a moment that the phones were going to talk to each other without the help of their owners, thus bypassing any human connection.

I finished my coffee and when I got up to leave, I noticed that each person was either talking on their phone or manipulating the keys in some fashion, ignoring the person next to him or her. I thought that the four people hardly knew they were with each other. The only thing they had in common was a cell phone.

In New York each morning I ride the elevator from my 11th floor apartment on my way to work. In that moving box I watch the people in it staring at their smart phones as if their lives depended on whatever they were seeing on the phones small screen. I see their fingers moving rapidly over the phones tiny keys as they send text messages or seek more information from whatever Web site they are visiting.

Over many weeks observation, I even noticed what seemed or be couples, husbands and wives or significant others, busily staring at their phones instead of looking at each other. Did they ever hold hands? Did they touch as lovers might? I wondered what life was like for them behind closed doors when they were home again together for the evening. I hope that life on the living room couch or in the matrimonial bed is far more interesting than the words and pictures social media and the Internet are presenting to them.

In a restaurant last week, a family of five sat next to my companion and me. They were tourists in New York on vacation. They sat down, hastily viewed the menu, and made up their minds what to order. Then each pulled out a smart phone or a tablet. The youngest, a girl perhaps ten, started to text her friends – I could tell what she was doing by how rapidly her fingers moved across the keyboard.  None of those at the table, including the parents, said anything to anyone else sitting there. So it goes.

Now take a hard look at the photos that are an important part of this essay. A friend gathered them from the Internet and sent them to me. The set’s title is “Hanging Out.” If you can see the faces of the young people and if you can watch their eyes, you may recognize that they only have eyes for the small instrument in their hand, never looking at or seeing anyone next to them, across from them, or near them.

These photos serve as an example of how everything outside the self has no meaning and does not exist, especially if you are young. Increasingly it seems that personal existence and even survival depends on the need for face-to-face social intercourse.

At one time, a long ago, the earliest known people sat around campfires or inside caves and grunted or talked as they described their day, vented their frustrations, reveled in something new, or were sad over a an unhappy event. Without saying it, people understood the importance of each other in what has become a cliché, the family of man. I believe that is quickly disappearing. Interacting with real people is still healthy. I am not sure how healthy it is to have an inanimate phone as one’s bosom companion. Are we really social animals? Is the collective ruling our lives? Do the new machines we create, as I believe, now control us? Only time will tell.

In creating its new Do Not Track button, Microsoft has angered The Digital Advertising Alliance, the major association of digital Internet advertisers, marketing and media companies.  Known as the DAA, it is upset for good reason when one considers that there are more than 600 million users of Windows 7 OS. DAA believes it will no longer have complete access to who, what and where you are on the Web and beyond if some of those people decide to use the Do Not Track icon. The DAA is probably frightened over the possibility that the 600 million will opt out simultaneously and they will lose all that free information about what a person does or does not like. Just imagine the ensuing wail that will erupt though the digital hallways of DAA. Though not likely to happen, it is crybaby talk. For too long the DAA and its members have been getting a free ride with its unbridled collection of what ordinary humans believe is private information. Microsoft’s decision to create its Do Not Track button still leaves the choice to use the new key up to the individual user. There is no saying people will decide to use the new icon.

Lest we forget, every browser including Firefox, Safari and Chrome, to name a few, allows the user to kill the cookies he or she does not want to track them. A person can preserve his or her privacy by using the privacy setting on any browser to protect him or herself from prying eyes. If you want privacy, do not be lazy. Lift your hand, use a finger and press a key that will wipe away the cookie collected by an outsider during your time online. To repeat: It does not take much to protect yourself, if you are strong enough, in touch with the reality of the Web and not overly lazy. I have a message for all of you naive social media addicts, especially those who use Facebook.  Do not think for a moment that because it is now a public company that your privacy has the protection it never had before the IPO that made Mark Zuckerberg and his friends rich beyond anyone’s imagination. I see to protect themselves that many on Facebook are writing notes that say that they are private. By saying it, they believe –wrongly– that protects their lives from intrusion.  As if a few words will protect their privacy. These are meaningless statements.

The philosophy of privacy is, however, oddly meaningless to many people. It is generational. The younger one is, the less privacy has meant to them – until now. Suddenly, they do not want their lives revealed to anyone, especially those I call cookie stealers — the ones who process the data they collect from cookies. Algorithms have always been tracking and collecting your personal data. Algorithms make no distinctions about your privacy concerns. To utter, as some are across the spectrum of social media are doing, especially on Facebook, that persons unknown  “are hereby prohibited from using, distributing, disclosing, copying etc.,” has the same effect as if you were shouting down a bottomless pit.

People give up all privacy the moment they sign on to a social media site. They are under a microscope and always will be as long as they allow the browser they use to easily track and distribute to interested parties everything they do online. Submissive is the operative word that defines most everyone who uses social media as his or her clubhouse. Don’t forget that those supposedly innocent apps you place on your mobile devices also allow advertisers to collect every bit of information about you and then use that information to sell you products you either do not want, and never heard of or surely never expected to hear about. Social media has almost everyone hooked. Sadly, those many millions are beyond help.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Rob Pongsajapan. Photograph two by Kevin Dooley. Photograph three and illustration five by o5com.

“I heard this jury say, ‘guilty’ 288 times–24 questions, 12 jurors. That’s the multiplication. I haven’t heard you apologize once,” Berman said before sentencing Dahrun Ravi to 30 days in jail. The sentence also includes three years probation, 300 hours of community service and over $11,000 in fines, 10K of which will be donated to an anti-bias organization.

The defense, led by the bumbling Steven Altman, who said he knew he was “climbing a mountain” seeking a leniency, asked for a stay of the sweetheart sentence. Come on, guy! I know you were hoping for no time behind bars for your client, but with 15 felony convictions, that had to seem unlikely. For their part prosecutors, led by Julia McClure also asked for a stay on behalf of the state. The state, blind-sided by the short jail sentence, is seeking a prison term, the maximum of which could be ten years. The judge denied the stays. Barring action from an appellate court, Ravi will report to jail on May 31.

The sentence tossed a shocking lid on an emotional morning, filled with victim impact statements from Tyler Clementi’s father, mother and brother as well as a letter from “M.B.,” Clementi’s fellow victim of the notorious spy-camming. Both Ravi’s parents also spoke passionately on behalf of leniency for their son. But Ravi, who was expected to address the court,remained mum.

Had Ravi, who was only 18 and, like his roommate Tyler Clementi, in the first few weeks of his freshman year at Rutgers, when the notorious web cam spying incidents (described by his defense team repeatedly as juvenile pranks) occurred, publicly apologized such a sentence might sit better with the Clementi family as well as gay rights advocates, and the community at large.

Quick trigger Twitter fingers display a mixed bag of reactions. Some suggest Ravi got away with murder. Others call the sentencing “compassionate.”

My reaction is somewhere down the middle. It’s strange because before viewing the sentencing I was hoping for compassion, playing it out in my dramatist’s mind as coming from the Clementis. But that’s not how it unfolded. The Clementis, while not vengeful, certainly asked for accountability and justice. Without offering a term, I’m sure they didn’t have a meager 30 day jail stint in mind, when the spoke of “consequences.”

Listening to all the pre-sentencing arguments and letters, as well as the judge’s early harsh words, I believed a prison sentence was, in fact, warranted; hoped it would be on the short end, say 1-3 years. I don’t believe incarceration is the answer to every offense or offender, and I believe, despite the prosecution’s protestations to the contrary, had Tyler Clementi not committed suicide ( Ravi was not implicated or charged with his death) this case would never have come before the court. It would have been handled internally at Rutgers. Still, Ravi refused a plea deal that would have avoided any incarceration. He turned it down and put the Clementi family ( as well as his own) through an excruciating ordeal. In his self-serving newspaper and “20/20″ interviews, Ravi said he couldn’t take the deal because he couldn’t admit to any bias. Such an admission, he maintained, would be lying.

I’m not so sure Ravi understands the insidious ways cultural prejudices can seep in and take up residence in one’s heart and mind.

If Ravi truly learns any hard lessons those insights will most likely be uncovered as he completes the mandated anti-bias counseling program that his probation sentence includes. He is a young man, and surely does not need to be locked away–or deported ( both “M.B.” in his letter and later Judge Berman, indicated influence, on his behalf, with immigration.) And he doesn’t deserve to be the poster boy for anti-gay bullying.

I wish some measure of closure for the Clementis, though as Judge Berman said, that will be hard to ever achieve. I know they’ve started the Tyler Clementi Foundation and hope the work they do there will grant them some solace as it helps countless people fight bias, find refuge and lead healthy and joyous lives. And I hope Dahrun Ravi cultivates the empathy that eluded him as a teenager and grows into a generous and productive adult. Thanks to Judge Berman’s generosity, he’ll have an early jump-start on his second chance.

Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter.

For some time I have been thinking about apps and what they do for us and to us. Apps may be great, but they are also a huge problem. To back me up, comes a story called “Selling You on Facebook” in The Wall Street Journal, yes, the Wall Street Journal, the one newspaper that I am sure is an object of loathing to anyone who regularly peruses this site for a left wing and progressive take on the world.

Non-political, the article’s premise is simple, one that I have been writing about recently. It says, “Many popular Facebook apps are obtaining sensitive information about users — and users’ friends – so don’t be surprised if details about your religious, political and even sexual preferences start popping up in unexpected places.” What the authors write is not a plot against freedom or social networks. They speak the truth. More importantly, the premise of the article extends to other apps as well and that is where the trouble begins.

We have a new player in the world of previously hidden information. The app. Apps are about giving – information of every kind, directions, instructions, name your poison. With all that and more, apps are fast becoming the single most important means of data collecting that people who do not believe in privacy, nor allow themselves to think that privacy is important, engage in at almost light speed. These amiable creatures called apps are taking over our lives.

In the recent not too distant past, advertisers used human focus groups to judge and help define new products and services. There were no algorithms to get in the way of the human equation. Mostly, these real people did a pretty good job. Hollywood movies and TV shows still use focus groups often to the dismay of the producers who believe their instincts work better in the art of storytelling.

If we do not know we should, that cookies on the Web provide anyone who gains access to them information about every move one makes as he or she surfs the Internet, often innocently and sometimes for other reasons.  As I write, apps are taking over for cookies by further devouring our online lives. Apps in a very short time have replaced cookies as the most important sales tool merchants of every type depend on.

At the rate we are going, apps will take over for both cookies and focus groups, dominating every choice we make. Our lives with all the different cyber platforms – meaning every mobile device including smart phones and tablets and every social network imaginable — control who we are and what we do and how we do everything beneath each clever, smooth, come-on interface. This will surely continue into the future. Face it, our online lives, however we perceive them, because of apps are now more than ever open for prying eyes to use the information they collect to sell us what we might not want and control us in ways that we never anticipated.

Yes, I know, apps have become very important in our lives and in how we live. They help when you are lost. They guide you to a good restaurant. They locate the nearest hospital. They find the closest gas station. They keep track of where your neighbors are, if you are so inclined to know where they are at all times. They can improve one’s life. They really do everything and more for a person in a complicated world that is more difficult to navigate every day. But addiction rules. As all addicts know, kicking a habit is nearly impossible.

I am willing to bet someone is working on an app as I write to cover the most unusual aspects of our lives. There are apps for everything and just about everything has an app. Pacman, once thought dead, is flourishing. This means that soon there will be an app for even more than we have apps for now. It does not mean apps are benign. If we succumb to these new apps, what little privacy we have will be lost forever. Privacy used to be, well, private. I care about privacy but many other people seem to revel in public exposure.

There are now probably more than a million apps available for the choosing. The making of an app has become a major tech industry. And if an app catches on, riches follow. One common theme impossible to ignore when exploring the effect of social media on how people live is the belief that social networks are about sharing. Sometimes people on social networks give away too much. That is because much of what is on all social networks is sophomoric. It is dorm room cool, which means that it is silly and self–gratifying. It depends on how needy one is.

You may wonder if anyone cares what you post, and because you may think no one does care, what you place for all to see has little interest beyond the words or photos on your page. This is all the better for the collectors of your data who mostly believe what they receive is too little. The maw they must fill is infinite. The craving for more data increases by the millisecond. It is voracious. Ignoring the need for privacy is now beyond help. It is a dead concept.

Using an app relieves a person from making direct eye-to-eye contact with another person. Technology today replaces the social experience of dealing with your fellow man and woman as if they were live and not microdots on a small screen. Using apps for everything obviates the need for real people in one’s life. Sorry, but Angry Birds are not real.

However, as long as I have free will, I am safe from this new invasion of my prime space. My hermit-like desire may be my last refuge, my final bastion of freedom. I have no apps.

Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for online magazines, The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, The History Channel, and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company, Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of seven books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal,” that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

This is the final guide that will be published as a part of the Progressives Guide To Social Media series.  Up to this point, we have covered initial tactics, in depth specifics on the six main social media sites, and overviews of many more sites.  By this stage in your training, you should have registered your account all over the social media spectrum, have clicked thousands of buttons, made some new friends, and have an idea where you want to focus your efforts more intensively.

Now it’s time to put it all together.

Content Aggregation
While navigating the rapid currents of the main social media sites, you will be exposed to dozens of important articles everyday.  Usually the really hot content will already be posted on the news and bookmarking sites, so feel free to give it some support and share it on the social media sites.  If it is not already posted, post it.

Another method to find good content to share is to subscribe to different progressive websites’ RSS or Atom feeds.  If you add a few dozen feeds, it can be resource intensive on your computer however, so unless you have a newer machine with good architecture, it might be better to keep it limited to 10 or less.  You can also find excellent content on sites that specialize in content aggregation, like LiberalUrls, popurls, and DailyKix.  Install the NewsForward app.  Use Summify to find some top stories daily.  Gain social authenticity by becoming the aggregation filter you seek.  Filter out the nonsense and only post top quality content, and you will earn the respect of people.

Bookmark Tactics
Part of being a progressive social media activist is debunking conservative disinformation, propaganda, and lies.  Either by doing your own research or by finding links others have posted in political engagements, it is a good idea to bookmark (favorite) important citations for repeated later use in debates.

Nest folders within folders within folders to keep everything organized because soon you will not be able to find the citations you are looking for otherwise.  Issue specific folders are a good idea.  For instance: environment, lgbt, economics, worker rights, equal rights, science, world news, crazy Republican bills, etc.  Similarly have a bookmark folder devoted to social media sites and tools.

Social Media Dashboards
While Shareaholic is an excellent tool to perform many social media functions easily, there are also some dashboard programs that can do multiple functions at once.  While none of these cover everything you want and using a mix of them might be a necessity, they can be a huge time saver, especially when you are on the go.

Ping is similar to Shareaholic, although it allows you to update your status on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, and other sites simultaneously with 2 clicks after you drag the Ping link to your bookmark toolbar.  There is also custom functionality to just update your status on certain sites or just post to your blogging sites.  Tracking short link statistics is another valuable feature.  Ping has been purchased by Seesmic however, and it appears that support may be discontinued in the future.

Seesmic allows you to post to Twitter, FB, and Linkedin.  You can use Seesmic on the web, on a mobile app, and a desktop program.  On the latter you can add Delicious, Tumblr, YouTube, Klout, Ping.fm, url shorteners, news readers, and more.

HootSuite probably has the best design and biggest potential out of all the dashboards at the moment.  Even if it’s coolest features are reserved for paying customers, the free version is still very functional, highly intuitive, and versatile.  Viewing your dashboard on an internet browser brings tabs for each account with different information feeds from Twitter, Facebook (including groups), Linkedin, WordPress, MySpace, etc., as well as additional apps like Tumblr, YouTube, and Flickr .  You can post to Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, with links being converted to the site’s own short url: ow.ly.   Clients who pay for the Enterprise service are currently able to use the dashboard for G+, although this is not available in the free version.  There is also a mobile app,  although it is prone to crashing.

TweetDeck is primarily focused on your Twitter accounts (like Echofon), although you can add your Facebook feed as well (like TwitterFeed).  It is better than both though, as it has multicolumn support and a superior interface.  You can use it within Chrome (called ChromeDeck), chrome it comes as a stand alone program (Mac and Windows), and as a mobile app.

The G++ extension allows you to see your Twitter and Facebook feeds in the G+ window, as well as share your G+ posts on them directly.  There are no free dashboards that can post to G+ at this point, but there are some tools to help integrate your experience.  PlusBounce is a tool in very primordial stages that allows you to automatically repost your Google+ updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, and should include circle filtering soon.

Etc.  While not technically dashboards, there are some free online content distribution services that you should know about.  Dlvr.it is probably the best right now.  You can use it to feed your blog posts directly to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, Tumblr, and more.  You can also have them deliver your .rss feeds from your submits at social news sites (like Digg, NewsVine, etc.).  Of course most folks would rather have a link to the actual article posted instead of a link to a comments page for an article on a social news site, so this would only be valuable in niche scenarios.  Twitter Feed is another option, and there are many more.   FriendFeed will aggregate many of your social media feeds into one place. If This Then That (IFTT) can help you perform tasks based on triggers.

Communication
Once you start to get some momentum and become an influencer in the social media world, there will be a flood of communication requests from other users of the sites you frequent, bloggers, and a lot of SEO marketers.  Ration your time.  You cannot have a close, personal relationship with everyone or answer all of their questions.  It will overwhelm you.  Focus on the activists.

That being said, it is important to have some avenues in which to communicate online.  Email and chat/direct messages on social media sites can be supplemented by external instant messaging and video conferencing tools.  Skype is a very popular program to use, as well as Google Talk (Gchat) and Windows Live.

You can have bring all your chat clients under one umbrella with a multiprotocol instant messaging application.  Digsby (only available for Windows) can integrate all of your messaging services together, as well as email accounts, and a few social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.  Trillian does the same job, and is available for all operating systems.

Time Management
With a limited amount of time available, it is important to ration your tasks.  Once your have mastered the content within the Progressives Guides to Social Media series, you can start to focus on actual activism.  Regardless of whether you spend an hour a day or 6 hours a day on internet activism, it is best to divide your time into thirds: 1/3rd supporting content, 1/3rd reading and researching, 1/3rd time commenting, writing, and communicating.  This will of course vary by how you want to operate, but this general principle works well.

Specialize in one social news site and one social networking site, but keep a diverse presence across all the major ones and at least a few minor ones.  When you find an important article (which should happen often), try to give it some social media love with a thumbs up on Reddit, Digg, SU, FB, G+,  Disqus, and more if you have time.  Share on Twitter, FB, and G+.  Things are constantly moving, always in a state of flux in social media, so try to keep up with all of the changes on LifeHacker and Mashable.  New functionality that suddenly appears can shift the whole landscape and your tactics will have to adjust accordingly.

While one person can be the spark that ignites world wide change, it is important to locate like-minded activists who you trust and organize into self-contained cells between 5 and 20 people.  Work cooperatively.  This is your inner circle and many smaller fish can team up against the big fish to have a major impact.

The Progressives Guide To Social Media series will give any progressive activist the tools they need to become powerful influencers in the social media world.  There is a steep learning curve, but if you’ve followed the instructions, it will all be worth the hard work after just a few short months.  There has never been a greater contrast between the forces of good and evil in this country, and our grassroots organizing backed up with the moral high ground and dedicated activists can defeat any freedom shredding corporate astroturf campaign.  This is our time.  Let’s get to work and have some fun!

Note- you can find me on Google+

Up to this point we have covered an introduction to progressive internet activism and the large social media sites.  Due to a limited amount of time that folks have online, those are the areas where the majority of their time should be focused to have the greatest impact.

That being said, there are dozens of other medium sized and smaller sites that can also be used, some of which are covered in this article.  They are more intimate communities with fewer users, which can be a nice change of pace and give your experience a more personal feel to it.  Below we will briefly cover the following sections:

Social News
Social Bookmarking
Social Networking
Misc.
Blogs

In addition to having signed up for Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, consider signing up for Newsvine, Fark, Meta Filter (MeFi), Slashdot (/.), Chime, Pinterest, Delicious, Diigo, Linkedin, MySpace, Orkut, hi5, netlog, Disqus, YouTube, Quora, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Posterous, Care2, DailyKos, and Democratic Underground.  Turn off all notifications so you don’t get overwhelmed by emails.  You can often use your previously created profiles at Twitter, Facebook, or Google to sign up for many of these with 2 clicks.  Think about installing a password manager like LastPass, (also available as a browser extension) and write down all of your passwords on a text file and email them to yourself as a backup accessible anywhere.  This process may take some time, but you will be grateful you did it later.  You will not only establish a presence across the board, but will prevent conservative stalkers from registering in places with your username in an attempt to smear your good name (they try to frame you for inappropriate comments).  Trust me, it is a regular tactic of the right wing in their campaign of digital warfare.

SOCIAL NEWS
This category of social media focuses in on news directly: headlines, breaking stories, the cutting edge of what’s new in the news.  Users submit articles, pictures, or videos that can be voted up or down by the greater community, with discussion for each submission which can usually be voted on as well.  The basic concept is that crowdsourcing will aggregate the best content to the top, a sort of democracy on the internet model.  A key feature of social news sites is the front page, which if reached will suddenly cause a rush of eyeballs onto key content.  Time is a critical factor on Social News sites, so push hard and push fast before stories expire or are no longer new.  Reddit and Digg have already been covered, so here are a few others you might want to try out.

Newsvine
The best designed and organized social media site on the internet, Newsvine makes up for a lack of major traction by having an excellent community.  Submitting articles is called seeding, and there is no downvote button on anything, only an up arrow to click if you think the article or comment is good.  A far better way of gauging how much content you seed is resonating however is by the number of comments, which usually far exceed the actual number of votes.

Citizen Journalism is another draw, as people can write their own columns.  The main sections you should pay attention to are politics, us-news, and world-news.  Join groups such as Activism, Left of Center, Greenvine, Anti-war, Free Thinkers, Rationalists, Atheism, VineSci, scitec, Fired Up Democrats, Obamavine, Marijuana, American Progressives, GOP Watch, Occupy Wall Street, Mad for Maddow, and World News/Views.  A list of some brilliant minds can be found below to get you started on your friends list.

proglib
Soph0571
truthlover
Carloz
McSpocky
GOZO-unlimited
American Idle
luckydog
anti-status quo
easyjjgrand3
Pavilion
jfxgillis
Gulliver’s Island
The Desert Rattler
Physicist-retired
Grae
Fed up with Republicans
MWeaver

Fark
This is a completely different beast in the social news world.  It is designed not to share news, but to make fun of it.  There is very limited usage potential outside of the actual front page unless you pay a $5 per month fee (or $50/year).  Still there are 500,000 registered accounts, it’s good for some laughs, and there is some limited potential in submitting humorous content that exposes the ridiculous things the right wing is trying to.  When adding content, editorialize the title a bit at the end with a couple humorous words.

Meta Filter (MeFi)
No site has stronger user loyalty than MeFi.  The site is relatively small at ~100,000 users, but is kept almost totally troll free by the one time $5 registration, which is small price to pay for access to this awesome community.  The site is rather poorly designed, but the focus is the quality of the discussions not the aesthetic appeal.  Instead of submitting news, you submit a general interest discussion idea that is full of embedded links.  If you ever want to take the temperature on any issue, this is the place to search, but beware of getting sucked too deep into the discussions or you will suddenly find your night is spent!

Slashdot (/.)
This site is more science and tech oriented and has moderate traffic.  Politics and other more progressively themed topics are not often posted on or discussed.  However there is a certain amount of bleed-over in regards to the unprecedented conservative attacks on science, net neutrality, and for censorship that resonate well here.  Wikileaks and Anonymous themed posts are also attractive.

Chime
When a social news site called Propeller was shut down by AOL-Netscape, many users relocated to Mixx (aka Mixx Classic and not to be confused with MixxingBowl).  When Mixx tanked, most users moved to the latest incarnation called Chime.  While still a small community, there is an excellent visual design, streamlined interface, and content scrolling that should mean future growth.  New features like the widget continue to roll out as well, giving users added functionality.

It would be wise to join these communities: US Politics, Social Justice, Occupy Wall Street, Nature, We Are The 99%, Occupy the Planet, and Social Media.  There will likely be more communities built in the future to focus articles for niche communities that are usually progressively oriented, like LGBT, environment, science, secularity, unions, education, etc.  A very brief starter list of suggested friends could include:

Newaya
Loup Dargent 
Capybara
shihtzuman
Jim Scherley
JaguarTx

Olddogg
This is the perfect example of what happens when wingnuts take over a social media website.  OldDogg, run by a well respected member of the social media community, had a huge burst of success following the revolt on Digg in September 2010.  A group of rabid ultra-conservatives (the Digg Patriots) soon invaded in force, and began to use their same old tricks of artificially manipulating the site by censoring progressive content.  Non-partisan users got tired of being attacked and fled the site.  After a few months the front page began to be dominated by far right sources, site traffic subsequently collapsed, and the site shut down in late December 2011.  EDIT 20Mar’12: It has been brought to my attention that Olddogg.com has now become The News Seed, although there was no redirect when I wrote this segment of the article in December 2011.  The conservative “Digg Patriots” that poisoned the development of Olddogg with their tactics of bullying and harassment have mostly moved onto a smaller site called PolitiCollision.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
While social news tends to focus on recent content, social bookmarking sites provide much stronger long term traction for evergreen content.  For instance, an article about the latest Palin gaffe will not get strong traction, but an analysis of how tax cuts for the rich have led to increasing wealth inequity and more difficult conditions for the working poor will do well.  StumbleUpon was covered in the 4th guide, now three more will be briefly covered.  It is pretty easy to use the Shareaholic extension to save important progressive content on all the social bookmarking sites.

Pinterest
While technically a social ‘photo-sharing’ service, and probably more appropriately grouped in with sites like Picassa and Flickr, Pinterest behaves more like a social bookmarking service.  It has a rich visual design, fluidity of use, and is seamlessly connected to many social media sites.  The user base is overwhelmingly female.  Pinterest has demonstrated exponential growth, having surpassed both Delicious and StumbleUpon in terms of traffic, reaching an Alexa rank of 19th in the US. There are currently over 10 million registered accounts and 9 million Facebook connections.  Even more impressive is the dedication of users who spend an average of 88 minutes spent on the site, only surpassed by Tumblr (142) and Facebook (394).

While the focus of Pinterest is currently stunning imagery, there is little doubt that there is a lot of potential here for progressive activism.  Pictures with inspirational quotations and comical memes that ridicule the lunacy of the right wing resonate well here.  Further, using the bookmarklet, you can pin sites and articles from the internet, and group everything into topical board, like Progressive Media.  A video version of this site can be found at Chill.

Delicious
This site is very similar to SU except it is smaller (5 million users), has a superior organizational scheme, and up until recently a terrible graphics interface.  The latter changed when a new company bought Delicious and completely revamped the site, giving it a shiny new look and feel.  While there were a few cumbersome methods to save your previous bookmarks on the site, most people lost everything in the changeover and had to start over in late September 2011.  A popular support forum was also killed in this process, and a lot of users left the site in revolt.  If you are looking to build up a lot of things to save quickly focus on the News and Politics section.  Follow the Progressive Stack.  Bookmarking is very simple if you drag the Delicious bookmarklet (button) to your bookmark toolbar.

Diigo
Similar to the others, but with additional functionality in that users can highlight specific sections and sticky notes for pages.  Information on Diigo is stored it the cloud, but there are numerous server issues and much smaller community which may steer users away from this site.

SOCIAL NETWORKING
Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ have been covered in previous guides, and should remain the primary focal points for the progressive social networking activist.  Now a handful of other sites will be examined in brief (a small sampling of a far larger list).  It is a good idea to register an account with the sites below, even if you never intend to use them.

Linkedin
This is predominantly a business networking website.  Although there are 120 million registered accounts, it has less value to activism than the social networking sites already discussed.  Linkedin will send you a lot of emails, and not only do they seem to try to hide how to turn off notifications, there are a lot of checkboxes to click (another good use for the EasyCheckBoxes GreaseMonkey script).  Linkedin is very integrated with various social media tools to make posting here hassle free.  Search for some groups to join if you want to spend more time on the site and avoid these mistakes.

MySpace
Once the king of social networking, this site has suffered a colossal collapse under Murdoch’s evil News Corp empire and is struggling to remain relevant, despite clinging onto 130 million users.

Orkut
There are 100 million Orkut users throughout the world, but they are primarily focused in Brazil and India with a moderate presence in Japan.  Unless you intend to connect with the world activist circuit (primarily in terms of human rights), there isn’t much of a need to invest any time here.

hi5
Another site that is not very popular in the USA, but has international appeal is hi5.  With 80 million users, it has it’s strongest presence in Latin America, India, Thailand, Romania, Jamaica, Central Africa, Portugal and Mongolia.  The site has also been retooled to focus on more on Social Gaming than networking at this stage, so it will not be very valuable to activists.

netlog
Once known as Redbox and before that Facebox, there are at least 70 million Netlog users worldwide (perhaps up to 93 million). It is most popular in parts of Europe, Turkey, the Arab World, and Québec.  Geotargeting programming is designed to customize content based on your location, and Netlog is available in many languages.  This website has a bit of use for the world arena, but will not help American activists working on a national scale.

MISC.
The following sites may or may not fit the definition of social media, but are good places to register accounts and spend a bit of time on.

Disqus
This is a commenting platform with 60 million users that over a million websites utilize for their comment sections.  Register an account on Disqus, link it to your Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts.  When you comment on news sites, you can then track how well received your comments are and any replies to them on your dashboard.  You can also like or dislike pages, and automatically post the likes to Twitter and Facebook.

YouTube
There are hundreds of millions of Youtube users, making it colossal community.  Activists use this site peripherally or regularly, depending on their interests and time constraints.  It’s good to have an account here either way to support bold progressive content located by giving it a thumbs up and perhaps a quick comment.  The comments section can be a warzone, so it’s a good idea to ignore most replies and always take the highroad no matter how much a right wing troll or astoturfing zombie is trying to drag the conversation down into the mud.  Some activists who are into creating videos for political purposes may use this site quite a bit more often, and there is a lot of room to push progressive content here.  Also consider participating in the more comfortable Vimeo community.

Quora
This is a Q&A website that has shown some impressive growth over the last year.  While issue advocacy is not a part of Quora, this site is a good avenue to debunk right wing propaganda.  Activist callsigns are not allowed on this site, the rules state you must use your real name.

URL Shorteners
While there are many automated tools that will shorten your links for you, it’s nice to be able to track how many clicks your links get as well as other statistics.  Even though these are not social media sites, they are useful, so register at goo.gl, bit.ly, and su.pr.

BLOGS
Weblogs are an integral part of social media activism.  They are an excellent way to discover and aggregate content, share key articles, and to write posts that flesh out one’s views on any issue.  For instance a lot of progressives find that they are constantly debunking the same right wing disinformation, talking points, propaganda, and lies repeatedly.  Instead of spending hours each week rewriting virtually the same reply, they can just write a blog post with proper citations that does the job, then link to that.  Voila.

There is some stiff competition in the world of blogging.  Once you have opened accounts at each of these, register your blogs at Technorati.  Use Shareaholic or other tools to post good content you find on every blog you have.

Tumblr
This is now the lead blogging platform and with good reason.  Tumblr is extremely easy to use, very visual, and social.  Posting is a snap, finding others to follow is quite easy, and customization is no problem here.  The last 18 months has seen phenomenal growth of Tumblr.  There are nearly 40 million blogs (less actual users) with 14 billion posts across the network, and there is no sign that Tumblr is going to slow down anytime soon.

Blogger
Blogger is formerly known as Blogspot.  It is still a good place to build up at least a minor presence, but the design is a bit cumbersome and traffic comes in behind Tumblr and WordPress.  One of the key aspects of using Blogger is the integration with the rest of the Google package, including G+ and Picassa.

WordPress
This is a complicated yet versatile free blogging platform to use.  People can really make professional quality blog posts with WordPress, and it is the preferred platform to use by many medium and major online publications.  Learn it.

Posterous
Very similar to Tumblr but with a smaller community.  The nice thing about Posterous is your ability to feed your publishing directly to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Delicious, and your other blogging sites.

Social Blogging
There are also community blogging forums that provide an excellent way to springboard your ideas and meet other activists.  Join the 17 million strong Care2 community,  the bold progressives at the Daily Kos, and the Democratic Underground.

One final note about blogging needs to be covered.  While it is certainly possible for folks to spend the time to purchase and build their own website that they can eventually monetize, that takes a LOT of time and effort that could be better invested in actual activism. That being said, if what you’re writing is resonating well, you may be invited to write for other publications, most of which have no clue how to use social media.  Advise them.  It’s important to have buttons at the top of each article to make it convenient for users to give a quick SU thumbs up, Facebook like, and +1 on Google+, as well as buttons for Digg, Reddit, and Twitter.  Check out the Digg Digg wordpress plugin.  There are a lot of progressive websites that have a ton of quality content that never gets read because they don’t help readers share things in the social media world.

Don’t hate the media, become the media
-Jello Biafra

Note- you can find me on Google+

Google+ (G+) is the most recent addition to the social media world.  Unlike previous projects such as Wave and Buzz, Google+ appears to have some lasting power, having grown to over 90 million users (sometimes called Plussers) in less than a year.  There has been a genius level of rolling upgrades with new functionality appearing every few weeks.  The community is still genuine and fun, being relatively free from spammers and marketers really helps. G+ FAQ.

G+ feels like a mix between Facebook and Twitter, but with a far better flow.   Shares (posts) from your friends scroll across the main screen, or you can narrow the view to a specific circle (group).  Likewise, you can post to the public domain (visible by anyone), just your friends, specific circles, or just one person for more privacy.  There are also hangouts where you can video conference with groups up to 10 people, and chat support.  You need to have a gmail account to use G+ and Google has a strict policy that you to use your real world name, although there are a few activists who desire more anonymity that use names that just sound real.

General Strategies
To begin with flesh out your profile with a few details.  Make sure you link your other social media profiles and include a couple recommended links.  A few select photos or pictures for the top of your profile page is a good idea (they can only be animated if they are no larger than 300 pixels). Next shorten your G+ profile url using gplus.to.  It is always better to have a a short url for easier sharing than some 30 character alphanumeric string.  Add yourself to some external website directories like Group/As, gglpls, and FindPeople.

While there is more functionality, the primary use of G+ for progressive activists is to send and receive important content.  To achieve this goal, a large responsive base of friends is required.  Like Twitter, one of the quickest ways to get more followers is simply to follow other progressives (called circling) and see who adds you back after a couple weeks.  There is a large list of shared circles below that can get you started.  Spend the first month exploring the functionality of G+ and adding users.  Keep your posting restrained for a while, say 2 or 3 a day until you have at least 1000 folks who have added you to their circles.

The design of a post is simply to attach a link to a news story, picture, or video, then write a few words about it.  As noted in the introduction article of this series, a good tactic is to write a thoughtful short paragraph about a news article, then paste that comment on every social media site.  If you are reposting something shared with you, always make sure you follow etiquette by attributing where you found the information.

If a post receives a lot of reshares, go check out the very cool Ripples feature to see who is sharing it and their influence.  There is now #hashtag support on G+, such as #progressive, #p2 (progressive 2.0), #ows, #lgbt, #green, #unions, #moveon, #secular, #edu, etc.  Searching for a group of thematic posts is as simple as clicking the tag or putting in your own at after this link http://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23 which can also be a good way to find other active G+ users.  Note that there is a maximum of 99 total “Acl entries” (hashtags + mentions) that you can put in any post.  The biggest topics of the day (which are often entertaining or tech, but rarely political) can be found at What’s Hot.  Search your top posts by replacing the numeric code in the url at this link with the one from your profile page.

There is an excellent app (mobile link) for your mobile device so you can interact on the go.  Note that updates usually come out first for Android models, with iPhone updates being shortly behind that.  There is a bit of browser favoritism as well, with a lot of handy Extensions being released for Chrome and far less support for Firefox and other browsers.  Connect/replace your blogger/blogspot profile with your G+ profile for integration.  Google+ To RSS will create the feed to your posts (alternate methods), then you can use IFTT recipes to automatically feed that into your Twitter and Facebook stream.  Generate a G+ widget for your Tumblr page or website.

Circle Enlargement
Begin by creating the following circles: Mutuals, Progressive, Recommended, and any other niches you are interested in (media, environment, lgbt, etc.; name as you like).  Try to keep the number of circles under 10 as the Circles Page is hideously designed.

A quick way of connecting with a lot of users in a very short period of time is to add entire circles that someone else has carefully sculpted and shared.  Note that you can add your carefully sculpted circles to your stream once you get them built up as well.  For instance, if you check out: 99% Circle 1 by Lynne Flynn,  you can Add Circle, name it, and poof, everyone has been added to a circle of that name on your circles page.  Find a big list of suggested circles below, but note you can only add about 1000 people per day until you are prevented from adding more.

You can also view the circles of some progressives influencers and add those you like to your Recommended circle.  If you don’t care if they circle you back, also add them to whatever niche circles they would apply to (say Progressive, Green, and/or Media, etc.).  Repeat this process over and over until you have at least 1000 people in your Recommended Circle.  You can also get started at the Google+ Unofficial Suggested Users page.  Later on, Google will have a real Suggested User list already compiled for you based on your existing friends under the ‘Find People’ tab, which you can Select All and add to your Recommended circle (capable of adding up to 500 people at a time).

Now begin posting and interacting with others.  Go to your various streams (based on your niche circles).  Add a +1, share, and/or comment on the things you like (do all 3 very liberally).  Check in at least twice a day.  Go to the Added You tab in Circles and select everyone, drag them to the Mutuals circle.  If you sometimes find someone on your stream that you don’t want to have in your circles, simply remove them.  After 2 weeks, delete the Recommended circle, and create a new circle called the same thing, Recommended2, or something of that nature.

Note that you can only add 5000 people to your circles max, regardless of how many folks have added you.  Once you near this barrier, you will need to clear out the inactive folks and those who have not added you to their circles.  Luckily, there are two extensions for Chrome (not available for other browsers at this time) called Uncircle Inactives+ and Uncircle Uncirclers+ that makes this easy.  Track your follower growth at SocialStatistics and various other funky user stats including a world map of your circlers at CircleCount.

Restrict who can send you chat messages to only your core circles (not Mutuals) in the chat privacy settings to cut down on the distractions.  If you want to meet someone face to face, feel free to start or join a Hangout.

Suggested Circles
Since G+ is still relatively new, places where circles are shared is a bit of a work in progress.  Try the Public Circles Database. There is a massive list of circles from a variety of interests located on a public Google Docs spreadsheet here.   Instead of scrolling this tome, you can just add specific circles like the ones below:

Progressive Politics by Wataru Tenga
G+ Politics: Progressives and Liberals by Andrew Hartwell
Influential LGBT Google+ Users by Dan Leveille
#p2 by moi and Sindicalistas – Trade Unionists by Lawrence Duffy
99% Circle 1 and 2 by Lynne Flynn
99% Circle by Jason M
OWS by Rob Salzman
Occupy Wall Street by Kyle Gottfried
Occupy Circle by Marc Round
Occupy Circle by Jared Mysko
People Sharing Info on Occupy Movements Worldwide by John Alchin
#OWS #occupyamerica by Levi Kent-Hickman
Occupy Pages by Harvey Wallbanger
Massive OWS circle by Mike Evans
Journalists by Jon Druin
Journalists by Jeff Jarvis
News Organizations by Breaking News page
Huffington Post by Craig Kanalley
Free Thinkers / Atheists by Yasin Inat
Atheists by Dartland Lee
Atheists by James May
Atheists, Secular Humanists and Free Thinkers by Ian Geldard
Science Circle by Chris Robinson
Science Circle by Fraser Cain
The Academy by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Science by Ravi sharma
#ScienceSunday by Robby Bowles
Space and Science by Darren Bounds
Vegetarians by Stephen Bishop

Progressive G+ Pages
Below is a sampling of more progressively oriented organizations that you might consider adding to a circle to find good content.  Note that this list is far from complete, and some of the sources might not be perfect for everyone.  There are additional pages that you might be interested in at the G+ Page Directory or the G+ Business Pages Directory.  General discussion can be found at the G+ Pages board.

Alternet
PoliticusUSA
RawStory (profile, not page)
FreakOutNation
Toke of the Town
NORML and TheWeedBlog
NewsJunkiePost
Firedoglake
Care2
Think Progress
Center for American Progress
PCCC (BoldProgressives.org)
Talking Points Memo
Media Matters for America
Current TV
Mother Jones
Grist
Slate
Wired
TreeHugger
Wikileaks
Anonymous
Occupy Wall Street (page 1 2 3)
PolitiFact
NPR
PBS
Al Jazeera English
The Guardian
BBC
RT
Breaking News
Huffington Post Politics
ProPublica
Daily Kos
MoveOn.org
AFL-CIO
Change.org
Vanity Fair
Planned Parenthood
Consumerist
Southern Poverty Law Center
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Common Cause
OpenCongress
Utne Reader
Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International USA
ACLU of Northern California
PhysOrg.com
Atheist Revolution
Scientific American
New Scientist
National Geographic
Mongabay

Top Progressive G+ Users
To get you started, here is a short list of a few progressively oriented folks to add to a circle.  Note that this starter list is just a very small sampling and not everyone here might be up your alley.

Rob Salzman
Jim Feig
Stephen Bishop
Carrie Worthen
Michael Custer
Zann Zsuzsannika
Dori Easter
Justin Bale
Susan Stone
Jake Phoenix
Wes Forster
Brian Wolfe
Steven Sudit
Ron Dobbs
Darque Wing
Sarah Jones
Brian Haner
Jason Easley
Michael Schobel
Peter Menchini
Wolf Revels
John Sawyer
Cindy Brown
Maria Allison
Jane Doe
John Geiger
Macolm Mills
Ben C. O. Grimm
Jason Leopold
Stephen C. Webster
David Badash
Steve Elliott
Alan Rosenblatt
Matthew Ygelsias
Cenk Uygur
Oliver Willis
Jasiri X
Kyle Gottfried
Jay Weixelbaum

Note- you can find me on Google+