As it stands now, when I attempt to share a petition with friends on any social media other than Facebook and Twitter, they get a message that the page is not configured as a public page. This happens because Change.org, like many other socially-minded organizations, wants to track their successful efforts in creating petitions. Media affected by these failed attempts to share include Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, Google Buzz, Delicious, and many more.

For the truly dedicated, it is possible to 1) - Copy the petition title; 2) - Open a Google search page or go to a search box; 3) - Paste the petition title into Google, and search; 4) - Locate the correct entry in Google search, and open the page; 5) - Verify the petition is the correct one, and copy the web address; and 6) - Go to your social media and share the petition with your friends.

There are better ways. My suggested solution would be to include a share button that would automatically provide an appropriate link for sharing, and would include all the major social media sharing sites. There are hundreds of millions of Internet users who connect with their friends on these sites. And there are many services such as SHARE THIS which provide buttons for this purpose. For reasons that I do not understand, (and have not been explained), my efforts to solicit appropriate changes to date have been rebuffed.

This is important for all the same reasons that Change.org is important -- because petitions provide us an organized way to let our leaders know what we think we and they should be doing better. And because rather than frustrate our users with failed shares, we can be facilitating the communication to other leaders conveniently and smoothly.

I understand and appreciate the value to Change.org of tracking what is effective and what isn't. But this is a solvable problem . . . . And it is time that we solve it!