Good founder Ben Goldhirsh shocked media types and set in motion a slew of terrible headline puns (“Bad! Major Editorial Layoffs Hit Good”) when the company laid off the majority of its editorial staff with very little explanation last June. Yet after a quiet summer, Goldhirsh and Good are looking to make a comeback as the company makes a dramatic leap from a traditional media company to a community platform.

Good.is, as the new platform is called, is less a change in mission for Goldhirsh and Good than it is a change of the means. According to Goldhirsh, the company, which was founded in 2006 as a magazine, saw media as the best vehicle for its message of promoting and rebranding civic good. Six years later, Goldhirsh envisions a new direction for the site. “The editorial content was and is important but there was

a growing and perhaps greater need sitting alongside of editorial, which was to convene and connect like-minded people,” Goldhirsh said. “We wanted to see if we could convene a community, not just an audience to come together, aggregate their clout, and drive outcomes.”

Good.is will work much like most community sites and social networks, where a user can log in, create a profile, and follow other users to receive content and share stories. To that end, the site will try to leverage its recently acquired social activist platform Jumo, founded by Facebook co-founder and New Republic publisher Chris Hughes. Where Good hopes to differentiate itself is with its action opportunities, an area with interesting sponsorship prospects that could attract brands. In order to drive tangible change and results, Good will team up with marketers to create branded civic challenges for the Good.is community. The hope is for...(Read more)