These days, it seems like you can't use the internet if you don't have a cause. At least not without looking like an amateur.

Lots of parties are organized via Twitter here in Toronto, and generally they are used to raise cash for food banks, hospitals and assorted other good works. (It probably helps people who are embarrassed to admit they made all their friends on Twitter. "Oh, the party is secondary. Normally I'd be busy on Friday night, but I really want to make sure. . . what is it this time? Oh yeah, I want to do my part to make sure the Symphony gets new clarinets.")

Activists are always early adopters of technology. Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society says you can tell if something online is working because people are using it to share pornography, cute pictures of cats, and causes. This is partly because of what's called the "cute cat theory of internet activism" and the basic premise is that authorities are less likely to crack down on sites that people are using to share pictures of cute cats, because people love that stuff. So, those sites are a good place to practice activism. You start censoring that site, you end up blocking cute cat pictures, suddenly you've upset a much larger section of society than just the activists. So activists use social media because it's an effective and stable platform for them.

Also, social media promotes the idea of activism. Facebook and Twitter naturally organize people by interests, associations and so on. Once you've got people organized why not do something with them. Save the whales, maybe.

In this way, activists are often early adopters and other early adopters often become activists in some way.

So, for all the activism that's going on out there, what have we got to show for it?

A few recent articles share some perspectives:

techPresident reviewed act.ly, a device that harnesses Twitter to gather petition signatures.

An example of its use:

Progressive groups aplenty spotted the fundraising potential of South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst, but Gilliam himself had an act.ly petition up and running almost immediately -- some 1,200 signatures in the first hour and a half, said [act.ly creator Jim] Gilliam -- and once someone discovered that Wilson's opponent was on ActBlue, a short link redirect channeled outrage into campaign resources. "The stuff that works best," says Gilliam, "is anything really, really fast. It gives a lot of advantage to individuals over organizations, because organizations like to plan campaigns. They'll come up with the right messaging, coordinate with other groups. It takes time." Gilliam deemed the Wilson petition a success after the congressman indeed apologized.

It might be a little too strong to call act.ly a success because a congressman apologized for shouting a cat call at the president. Probably was going to happen anyway. But there is an interesting evolution to be seen. The petition is no longer a lifeless list of names: it can become a conversation.

"Twitter is fundamentally two-way," says Gilliam. "This isn't just 'create a petition, deliver it.' This is more like a conversation -- but it's a conversation where one side can say that there a lot of other people who care about this."

Changes like this are more revealing of the impact social media is having on activism. A petition is a petition, whether it's in an email or in a binder. But it's certainly easier to get signatures today, when you can post a link to a petition or information about a cause on Facebook and Twitter, throwing it in front of more eyes in seconds than you could in a day spent knocking on doors. But is it too easy? If anybody can gather hundreds, even thousands, of signatures online, does the basic law of supply and demand cheapen them? If a politician gets one letter with one million signatures on it, he's probably going to take notice. If he gets hundreds of letters with one million signatures, he's probably going to take a coffee break.

Jan Chipchase, a kind of corporate anthropologist who conducts research for Nokia Design, has noticed a certain amount of activism glut.

Chipchase came across a flash mob protest against the incarceration of Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi. (Flash mobs are semi-spontaneous public events organized by mobile devices and the internet.) What initially caught his attention were the slick protest posters made by big-deal graffiti artist Shepard Fairey. But on reflection, he had to wonder if such a slick production could be put together so easily:

At what point does the cost of identifying and bringing together like-minds in a crowd become so low as to be deemed trivial? In what contexts will the process be sufficiently automated/rapid that a significant % of 'mobsters will be unsure what they're mobbing about? The equivalent of joining a Soviet era queue without knowing what's at the end of the queue. Yup - with a bit of time-warp magic there'd be an app for that. And in a world of limited attention spans and a long list of causes - what are the tools that will allow Mob C to lo-jack Mob B to lo-jack Mob A?

An article in Toronto's Now Magazine says that a different kind of organizing has swamped the city. The author looks at the number of "unconferences" (like our own AgendaCamps, these are a gathering of people where there is no set agenda, and they don't go to hear specific speakers speak, they go to talk with other attendees) and decrees "after three years of them, it appears we’ve had un too many. Unconference fatigue is beginning to set in." The piece cites no evidence of this glut, only that there are many unconferences (the author listed five).

It's an unconvincing argument, but it helps us parse the bigger issue. People organizing groups and activities is great. It's worthwhile knowing a large group of people with similar interests to your own. The parties and unconferences they throw are an excellent way to gather the group, strengthen the ties between individuals, and why not throw in some casual fund-raising on the side? But when they attempt to use these organizational tools to move from their collection of followers to the next level, whether it's trying to get government to act or raise awareness of a specific cause, that they need to consider the risk of glut.

What is the value of an assembly of people gathered casually online? How carefully have they considered the issue? Does an online, loose-tie group undermine the type of image you are trying to present? Is this cause going to get lost in a flood of other issues? When someone signs a Twitter petition, do they spend any more time considering the issue than it takes to click the Retweet icon?

Seems like a good conversation to have at an unconference.