Essembly was a non-partisan political social networking service that allowed its users to connect with one another based on political opinions, participate in unmoderated discussion, and organize for political action. In 2006, it was described as a "Friendster for politics". Essembly differentiated itself from other social networking services by actively promoting intelligent discussion and debate while remaining "fiercely non-partisan."
History
It was founded in 2005 by 23-year old Joe Green, a Harvard graduate and college roommate of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the collegiate social-networking site Facebook. The angel investor was someone in the petroleum industry. After its launch in 2005, Essembly membership was offered by invitation only, as the website was still in closed beta. In May 2006, Essembly opened membership to the public, and began to run advertisements on Facebook. Starting in September 2006, Essembly remained in public beta, the staff of Essembly has, on the whole, moved on to a new venture called Project Agape. To grow the site, the founder "had a bunch of nonprofit groups basically spam their lists." The site was shut down in May 2010.
Features
Users created a personal profile with information including a photo, contact information, non-political interests, voter information, and a brief resume for educational background and personal strengths.
Resolves
Interaction centered around resolves, short ideological statements, designed to spawn debate. Members voted on resolves, by choosing to "agree, lean agree, lean against, or against." When a user voted on a resolve, this vote was recorded in their profile and added to their "ideological proximity". Members had the option of adding a comment that appeared with their vote, allowing them to explain their opinion further. Each comment, which could not be edited, was able to be discussed via a second link, and it is in these small discussions that most of the website's debate took place. Members were able to post up to 5 resolves in a day.
Groups
The roles that groups played on Essembly were different than groups on more traditional social-networking websites. While members were able to create groups with any stated purpose, they were frequently created with members sharing a common political ideal or support for a specific issue. Groups can post internal resolves that only members can vote on and discuss; alternatively, group administrators can post universal resolves under the group's name, viewable and open to discussion for the entire website.
Ideological Proximity
Users compared their political compatibility with other members or groups by using the "Ideological Proximity" number, which represented how likely a users would agree on politics, based on voting histories with "resolves". An ideological proximity of 100 meant that both users voted the same on every single resolve that they've both voted on, while an ideological proximity of 0 meant that they have voted opposite on every resolve. Users were able to bring up a list that showed each resolve in question and how each person voted, as well as which resolves that they voted on individually.
