One of the most interesting new features about the electorate that's coming into sharper focus during this campaign cycle is a certain sector's use of social networking technologies to achieve its collective social goals.

"There's a magic combination between people who are passionate about a lot of things on the web, which can act as an engine of social change, and other people (the experts) who live and breathe a particular issue. How do you reach out and build a community around that?" asks Joshua Levy, the new managing editor of Change.org.

Photo: Joshua Levy

This sector is the so-called Millennial Generation, those who were born between 1982 and 2002, according to researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss.

You've already witnessed some of this action underway. The most prominent example is Barack Obama's social-networking driven presidential campaign.

One of the defining aspects of this emerging – and sizable – generation is its collective approach to social issues and the rate at which its members volunteer, according to the researchers, whose work and its significance for politics have been chronicled extensively in two new books, "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & The Future of American Politics," and "Youth To Power."

As if to prove the point, Obama's online networking has been helped along by

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who at 24 is by definition part of this Millennial demographic.

But how can this intent and energy be harnessed and capitalized upon beyond electoral politics?

That's a question that 27-year-old Ben Rattray and his new hire Joshua Levy are attempting to tackle with aptly-named Change.org, an organization that's banking on a number of trends to try and make social activism more efficient and effective. Levy joins the organization after two years as associate editor at TechPresident, the blog associated with the annual conference that's all about technology and politics.

Rattray wants to make it easy for people who want to make lasting social change to find opportunities, and to network with others online. So, for example, if you want to do something to change the current situation on any given social issue, you'd go and use Change.org's search engine to find the non-profits and peers who are interested in the same thing.

Though the group doesn't specify that it's targeting a certain demographic, the civic-minded generation of more than 50 million people will certainly provide a boost to this start-up's goal of connecting like-minded people around causes that they care about. And it's just one out of several emerging kinds of social entrepreneur type of projects, such as the New Progressive Coalition's, that's trying to build an infrastructure beyond the election. The common goal is to capitalize on the energy and let's-improve-things-without-DC-ethos we've seen behind the social networking phenomenon.

Change.org currently has 2,000 non-profit groups using its social networking site, Rattray says. Its next iteration, which Levy has been hired to build, is a blogging network.

"The idea is to translate people's interest in a social issue to action," Rattray says. "There's a huge opportunity online to create niche media portals about things not often covered in the news."

Levy will serve as the site's managing editor. He's been charged with hiring 15 bloggers who will be paid a monthly stipend to write about specific issues, such as homelessness, global warming, human trafficking, and so on. Rattray hopes to have about 50 bloggers by the end of the year.

The project's goal is to enable people with similar interests in specific areas of social change to congregate in one place and to enable them to contribute, share and hash out ideas both amongst themselves and the non-profit organizations.

Levy says that the project also turns on the idea of asking a large number of busy people to contribute small chunks of time to volunteer – just as

Wikipedia does. Collectively, that time and expertise that's focused on a common goal adds up exponentially.

Or at least that's the hope.