Back when everyone was saying Al Gore "invented the Internet," no one rolled their eyes more than the Brits. Back then, the very notion of Internet-based technologies was enough to send British eyes into one-eighties, never mind the marriage of politics and social media. The idea of the Queen appearing on YouTube? Patently ridiculous.

What a change a few years can bring, because there she is, on YouTube's Royal Channel, with her annual Christmas speech and video clips of Prince William flying a plane.

With the next general election looming in 2009, politicians are beginning to mirror their American counterparts in hopes of winning more votes.

Justin Perkins, Heather Holdridge, & James O’Malley, Care2

It's happening.

A few small nonprofits with distributed networks of volunteers are swamping social networks and raising thousands of dollars for orphans in China and other worthy causes. Obama, Edwards and Ron Paul have seen droves of new donors come out of the woodwork with surprising speed.

Though the tried and true one-to-many broadcast model is still working, plenty of examples confirm the notion that loose distributed networks with very little centralized oversight or control can rally together around a common goal in support of an organization -- both nonprofits and political candidates.