Kevin: Mark Potts looks at the community interaction on the new site Civil Beat in Hawaii. Only subscribers can comment. The site has already tackled the issue of civil unions, which usually would be a cue for a god awful fight on most sites. However, the discussion is polite. It's an interesting model where anyone can read comments but only subscribers can contribute to them.

Kevin: Juliana Rotich of Ushahidi talks about using the platform for non-political purposes. "How do we inspire active participation in a project that is non-political, and not related to a crisis?" The key? "To make it work, however, this kind of application requires aggressive marketing and online awareness campaigns, and mixing and matching online and offline initiatives."