Essembly

Essembly was a non-partisan political social networking website that allowed its users to connect with one another based on political opinions, participate in unmoderated discussion, and organize for political action. It was founded in 2005 by Joe Green, a Harvard graduate and college roommate of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the collegiate social-networking site Facebook. Essembly differentiates itself from other social-networking sites by actively promoting intelligent discussion and debate while remaining (as the site's "About Us" page claims) "fiercely non-partisan." A July 2006 Newsweek article put the number of registered users at over 17,000.

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 (to anyone with a valid email address), 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.

On January 30, 2010 Essembly stopped working after a successful computer activist effort to shut the site down over alleged cyberbullying activity coordinated by several of the Chicago-based members. After being alerted to the problem, Joe Green restored the site by Valentine's Day. However, since May, 2010 the site has been down due to lack of resources to counter the evolving shutdown effort.