Welcome to the Shuru design site! The following pages, and this blog, are designed to show anyone the details and big ideas behind Shuru. Once you have seen enough, get in touch and tell us how you would like to help. We are hoping for a launch date of July 1st, 2007 – so get reading!

Tool. Shuru is three things: a tool, a community, and a starting place. It is a tool for interested people to leverage the viral potential of the internet and mobile phones to spread a social message. Then, using the same technologies, the tool empowers these ‘message readers’ by allowing them to take real world ‘actions’ that the message suggests. This meticulously designed tool will unleash the viral potential of communications technologies, and will be freely available to all – anyone can make a message, suggest action, and tip the first domino. Then, if people are convinced, thousands or even millions of people can easily join in.

Community. As more and more people take action on individual messages, or causes, a social network of action takers and cause creators will form. This will be a broad scale network, with automatic membership resulting from use of the tools above. Individual action history will be tracked, and publicly displayed, for each user – around this core community feature, groups will form. These groups might allowing people to make connections and collaborate on future social action, or they might simply let a casual user brag about her interests and impact on the world.

Starting place. If the design of both the tool and community is correct, Shuru will ride (and help create!) the next wave of an evolution in democracy. By creating an intelligent way to debate and make choices about the complex realities of our connected world, and then coordinating the actions of millions of people at the same time, Shuru is a starting place for a truly participatory democracy: one where a la carte political participation becomes the norm, and existing political structures better serve the needs of all people. The disproportionate power of special interest lobbies threatens western democracy. Shuru will give individuals the power to build a groundswell support for any worthy issue – in effect, becoming the people’s lobbyist.

Let’s zoom in. Think of the email pleas you have undoubtedly received requesting help in saving the life of child cancer patient, or to organize a boycott of some product or company – they don’t work, or they are hoaxes. Take away the hoaxes and spam, keep the millions of readers, add a web community, add outcome and reputation tracking, multiply the reach by a factor of 10, and you have Shuru. By using a reputation system and smart filtering to eliminate spam, and a central page for each cause that tracks outcome and success (think: ‘The Arctic Wildlife Refuge is saved! Thanks! and you can stop forwarding!), as well as providing the ability to take action immediately, easily, and directly – Shuru is can coordinate the actions of millions.

But it doesn’t stop there; the Shuru design encourages civic and issue education. And careful consideration of emotional feedback will ensure that people – especially young people – keep coming back for 10, then 20 causes. Imagine the excitement of a 17 year old member receiving an update email two weeks after first signing up and forwarding the cause to 10 friends, the message read: ‘you directly caused 10,000 people to sign up, and $25,000 to be donated. Thank you’. Think of the emotional rush! It will will keep users coming back; both to participate in, and create new Shuru causes. We want, ‘I changed the world today’ to become a normal thing to hear in casual conversation. Our mission is complete when 10,000 user generated causes change the face of democracy and politics as we know it. Are you ready? We need your help! It’s your world. Start something with Shuru.


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