"The advent of mobile communication technologies and online volunteering, for example, has enabled many more people to participate for the first time. Mass Short Message Service (SMS) communication is one form of "microvolunteerism" that contributes to the production and sharing of information," the report says.

Microvolunteerism explores the newly emerging design territory for volunteering on the order of seconds—"I have forty-two seconds at this bus stop; how can I volunteer?"

There have been some interesting thoughts about 'What makes people work for free?’ since it was published on openbusiness.cc. The idea of 'micro-innovation’, the act of making very small contributions to a much larger, much broader innovation sprung op [sic] at principledinnovation.com. A reply to this idea was the idea of 'micro-volunteerism’ i.e. you can put a touch on something and never spend time on it again.