From an organizer's perspective, one of the greatest successes of yesterday's compelling MTV town hall with President Obama is that anti-genocide forces were able to drive Twitter'd questions tagged "#asksudan" to the top of the more than 100,000 quesetioning tweets that MTV has said came in for the event. During the event, the question got asked, and Obama answered. The Genocide Intervention Network's Janessa Goldbeck was part of that drive, which produced several hundred Darfur-related tweets. From that, Goldbeck draws a little perspective on the great Gladwellian social change debate -- that today's tangled global problems might be in need of a little slacktivism:

When you work on an issue as big and as messy as "ending genocide in Sudan," you need entry-level actions and tangible victories to prove to people that they do have power and that they are part of something bigger than themselves. Creating peace in Sudan is not an issue that Americans can take "direct action" against, like sitting in at a lunch counter. It is something we want our government to act on, and to make this happen we have to build political will, which means organizing both online and offline. Social media platforms lower the barrier to entry and provide people with a mechanisms to connect and get involved—hopefully for the long haul.

And taking a step back from yesterday to view the bigger picture:

Did Facebook and Twitter, as tools, get the U.N. to authorize one of the largest peacekeeping missions in the world to Sudan, or get the U.S. President to chair a multilateral meeting on Sudan at the U.N, General Assembly last month? Of course not. But by using those platforms (and others) to draw in and activate people, the anti-genocide movement has been able to grow its ranks, build political will, and achieve change.

Shorter Goldbeck: No, Twitter isn't social change. But it's indeed, in the right hands, a tool for change. Here's the rest of her piece. (By the way, if you haven't watched yesterday's MTV "Conversation with President Obama," they've got the video archived here.)