Dania Gerhardt, co-founder and COO of Amazee — whom I spotted at TechCrunch50 last week — passes along word of the collaboration site’s US launch: Amazee launches network for ‘collective action.’

Amazee, the first social collaboration network, today formally launched its free platform designed to make it easier for any individual or group anywhere to initiate and collaborate on public and private projects. Amazee is the first online platform to combine standard social networking tools, online collaboration management tools, and the ability for project initiators to promote their projects, offer sponsorships and sell advertising.

"Amazee is a more evolved social networking site devoted to the joy of
collective action and designed to empower individuals and small groups to launch global initiatives," said Gregory Gerhardt, CEO of Amazee, which is headquartered in Zurich and has an office in San Francisco.

"Activism is part of the culture of the Internet and is fueling the rapid growth of social networking. Amazee was built to channel this activism and provides powerful tools to help project initiators organize, collaborate on, track, promote, and fund projects of any size with participants from anywhere around the world."

Key features of Amazee

Social networking tools include member profiles, invitations, messaging and newsfeeds.

Collaboration Management features include to-do list, calendar, discussion forum, write-board, voting, member right management and file sharing.

Site Promotion is enabled by a shareable project home page accessible by anyone on the Internet without an Amazee membership, making it easy for project teams to drive new members to a site via all the tools available on the Internet, including other social networking sites, email campaigns, media outreach, and advertising. 

Project Funding is an important and unique part of Amazee, providing several built-in mechanisms for projects to raise money.

Support nonprofits with Causecast from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here’s a 6-minute video interview I conducted with Ryan Scott, founder and CEO of Causecast, on the day of its launch, Sept. 10, 2008, just after Scott’s presentation at TechCrunch50.

As the site’s About page says, Causecast empowers people who want to make change. It’s a platform and social network where media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose. Jennifer Lopez, Kanye West, Matthew Modene and Jenny McCarthy are among the Hollywood celebrities who have pitched in on behalf of a cause for the Santa Monica-based outfit. But, of course, regular folks are the engine that drives Causecast.

Good stuff. I’ll be keeping an eye on its progress over the coming months.

Watch the video on Vimeo
Watch the video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Download the original video from Archive.org

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz