With over 60 action sources, there is a constant stream of ways for people to change the world. The Social Actions API is where the real beauty of Social Actions lies. Developers can take the data and create any number of mashups – such as web widgets, Wordpress plugins, Facebook apps and Twitter feeds.

The action sources are US- and UK-centric, however that does not stop Australians from using the platform. Two quick ways to take advantage of Social Actions is using Twitter or Delicious.

• Twitter – use the hashtag #takeaction in your tweets.
• Delicious – use the tag takeaction when saving bookmarks.

These will then be picked up by the Social Actions API – I told you it was simple!

My first foray into playing with the Social Actions data was to create @OzActions – which tweets Australia-related actions. It took less than five minutes. You can follow this or any of the other Twitter Action Packs to be alerted of opportunities relating to issues you care about.

Leave a comment, or connect with me at my.socialactions.com.

The service is available to causes (non-profits and political campaigns alike) only. This is a smart move by Giv.to, as by limiting service to causes, the Giv.to links will gain credibility in the online community. An added bonus is that the service does not allow anonymous links, so links can be trusted.

The analytics are the best I’ve seen to date. I’m particularly impressed with the Visitor Details, as it shows which city clicks are coming from (not to mention down to the second timestamp against each click). Clear graphs showing the Total Clicks over time and the more granular Clicks in the Last 24 Hours allow for an at a glance overview of each links success.

For those worried about Twitter account security in these times of scam Twitter services, Giv.to uses Twitter’s OAuth authentication service, rather than asking for your username and password when logging in.

Now, on to the pricing plans. For a limited time, the Basic service is free, and allows for unlimited URL creation. Extra features like extra-short URLs, vanity URLs and multiple users do come at a cost – from $5 to $50 a month (USD). However, when you consider the potential value of a URL like http://giv.to/mycause – a service like this would quickly find a place in any non-profit’s budget.

Over to you – have you used Giv.to? Will you be making the switch or are you content with your current service?