Diana, Sam and I are experimenting with Thunderclap. I really want to learn to play with it. This page is an explainer for folks who would like to join us. You can find the project page for our first Thunderclap here.
Thunderclap is a crowd-speaking platform. It is designed to allow people to blast out messages to hundreds of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts all at once. You can find the FAQ here.
The things you need to know:
1. You have to sign in with a FB, Twitter, or Tumblr account. If you have accounts on more than one of these three platforms, you can support a Thunderclap with two or three different accounts.
2. To use Thunderclap, you have to allow it to post to the account you signed in with on your behalf, but the permission you are granting is very specific and well-defined.
a. Thunderclap only posts to your account. I will not spam your friends’ profiles, and it only posts one message per project.
b. Thunderclap only posts on your behalf for projects that you support, by which I mean you have to go to the Thunderclap project page and click “Support this Project with Facebook (or Tumblr or Twitter).”
c. Thunderclap does not store the username and password for the account you sign in with. It obtains a secure token to post on your behalf only for the projects you choose to support.
d. If you decide you would rather not support a project, you can return to the project page and opt out at any point before the deadline for the message to be sent out.
Email me: Sourcererblog@yahoo.com if you want to talk to me about it further. I am just a user like you, I don’t have any special knowledge, but I have looked at it closely and I think it a safe and potentially-powerful tool for sending coordinated messages into the social media ecosystem.
Sourcerer 
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Some other things you might like to know.
The link we are Thunderclapping is to a fundraising page for Sam’s movie. The fundraising campaign runs out on the 29th, but Sam gets to keep what he raises even if he doesn’t make the goal. The Thunderclap can help because it could help him pick up a couple of dozen donors (or more), who will not hear about this movie unless the Thunderclap is sent, and anything he can get in this last week will be more than he has now.
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I have been talking about this movie with Sam for over a year. I think, if he can get it finished, he has a good chance of getting it onto the festival circuit. That means a chance for a big distributor to like it enough to pick it up.
That would be a big break for Sam.
A big break for Sam would be good for Diana and the Little Jedi.
That is why I am doing this.
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It is seriously a feel-good movie about a bunch of guys who started a Mardi Gras Krewe and ended up attracting hundreds of other people to join it.
And they use their local recognition to raise money for the Childrens’ Hospital and Earthquake victims.
I have photos of them handing big cardboard checks to some of these charities. Here is a story about their earthquake relieve efforts.
http://www.noladefender.com/content/45elvi-a8broad
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Just to note for archival purposes – The Thunderclap succeeded. I never did a full postmortem on it, but I still have the lessons learned in my head. It is repeatable, but every Thunderclap is different. We’ll never be able to tag our whole family again, for instance.
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