The untouchable brilliance of TED was under fire this week for their decision not to publish a talk by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. The talk in question sought to dispel the GOP’s trusty, “Job Creator” myth, and transplant the paradigm with the idea that middle class consumers are the true job creators. A back and forth ensued between Hanaur, TED and the National Journal, which first published the story of the talk that was, Too Hot for Ted: Income Inequality.

TED relented and released the video, but along with a feckless rebuttal by TED Curator, Chris Anderson who assured, “The internets” (his term) that the talk had not been censored due to its partisan nature. Anderson claims, “The audience at TED who heard it live (and who are often accused of being overly enthusiastic about left-leaning ideas) gave it, on average, mediocre ratings.” Yet, they clearly give the talk a standing ovation in the video. Anderson further promotes the view he is trying to diffuse by saying that the talk, “…framed the issue in a way that was explicitly partisan.” In other words, they didn’t reject posting the video because the talk was partisan, but the talk was partisan. (I’m thinking Anderson could have a sterling career as a Romney speechwriter.)

Though I find the TED teams’ excuses unconvincing. The frightening reality is that Conservative linguists have succeeded in making common sense issues and arguments partisan. Is there really a partisan debate about judging the strength of the economy by the number of billionaire “Job Creators,” verse the standard indicators of employment as well as consumer confidence and consumption? No. History and basic economics show that income inequality is bad for everyone while a robust middle class means more consumers to propel industry. The problem with Hanauer’s talk is that partisans on the right have succeeded in framing basic logic as…partisan! The talk was simply a sound, “Idea Worth Spreading.”

Anderson worries in an Email obtained by the National Journal that the talk will make TED seem too partisan, especially due to the imminent release of Melinda Gates’ talk on contraception in the developing world.. “Next week ain’t right. Confidentially, we already have Melinda Gates on contraception going out. Sorry for the mixed messages on this.” Got that? The use of basic family planning tools is partisan!

The partisan parity fallacy values perceived balance over reasonable debate. The moment one political group makes a claim, all claims to the contrary become partisan.

The problem that TED and every media organization that buys into this false frame have uncovered is that one political party has openly rejected reason. If the GOP claimed that they sky does NOT appear blue, a TED talk explaining why the sky appears blue would be, “Politically charged.” Climate change. A woman’s access not just to abortion, but even contraception. The thoroughly debunked notion of Trickle-Down-Economics. The separation of church and state. The word, “Gay,” being spoken in a school. Access to basic science in text books. All are now partisan. It’s hard to spread worthy ideas when a radical group of true believers can label basic truth  as partisan ideology. Stephen Colbert is dead on. It is no longer about what is logically right or true, but what feels true. Truthiness, indeed.

via gizmodo.com

This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.

Read the whole story on Gizmodo

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Invisible Children became Attention Economy millionaires in a matter of days. Here is how:

1. They Made it Personal

How does a young father from San Diego make a warlord famous? He starts by telling us about his own son. The story’s narrative does not open with photos or news reports of Joseph Kony‘s atrocities, nor with an introduction of the former child soldier named Jacob. The story begins in a delivery room of a hospital in the United States. Jason Russel takes the viewer along on HIS journey, not that of a Ugandan child or warlord.

2. They Knew Their Audience

Why did Russel make a film about himself? He did so because naive and impressionable youth are his audience. Kony 2012 is NOT a film for Africans. It is a film for American youth and the best way to capture their attention is by giving them a story to which they can relate. IC made editorial decisions that always put the audience above any concern for other viewers or policy complexity. Jason Mogus articulated this well in his post, Why your non-profit won’t make a Kony 2012:

IC knew who its audience was, simply, American youth. It speaks in their language, using their cultural heros and influencers. Everything in KONY 2012 from the visuals (Facebook, hip posters) to the tone (hopeful, not dour or depressing) to the emotional hooks (kids, the power of people to tip the world, social media) speaks directly to this audience. Maybe this is one reason why it annoyed so many “institutional experts” over 40!

3. They Were Bold and Controversial

IC’s goal was to, “Make Kony Famous,” and drive a young generation to human rights activism. What they needed was attention. IC was bound to upset many by being incredibly personal and driving messaging at one audience. This is the trade off in an age where information flows fast and free: use general messages that appeal on the surface to many, but deeply engage nobody; or, target your message to the point that it will alienate many audiences while enthralling your target.

We have moved to a media reality in which a small group of broadcasters no longer demand viewers’ attention, but viewers demand content made for them, when they want it. It seems counter-intuitive, but the way to ultimately reach millions is to focus all your attention on a few (See: Zuckerberg, Mark). IC has spent 9 years targeting young and hyper-connected idealists. Kony 2012 was the culmination of those efforts and it grabbed a passionate core audience who turned it into a viral sensation.To gain committed supporters in the New Media world, you must be prepared for some stone throwing.

4. They Made a Social Movie About Social Activism

Make a product within the medium where you want your supporters to take action. This is advice we give often. Want your activists to upload webcam videos? Then design a call to action on YouTube. Want them to make well-produced and artistic videos? Then target Vimeo and Blip.TV. Photo camapigning – Flickr; Trending Tweets – Twitter; Tell their friends – Facebook, and so on…

Oistein pointed out that IC in effect made a film about the power of social media. They drove their supporters to share the film by making the film within a Facebook timeline. The film even opens with clips of the Arab Spring and highlights social media’s power to drive change that the “Experts” said would never happen. The message is both subliminal and overt: We can change the world with social media.

5. They Already Won

One of the most interesting and confusing facts about Kony 2012 for me is that the call to action is, by definition, a call to inaction. IC does not want something new to happen, they want things to stay as they are — “Keep the military advisers in Central Africa.” There are two valuable lessons within this reality:

1. Activists should not obsess about getting 100 million people paying attention to their cause, because you rarely need that many people to make change. IC and many allies, including Enough and Amnesty International, had worked for years to drive more US interest in stopping the LRA and they succeeded. In fact, their efforts led to a UN supported mission (that ended tragically) and George W. Bush sending military support, all before Obama announced similar efforts in October, 2011.
2. Successful awareness campaigns call for specific action. IC has tipped their hand in past statements and videos that they are not simply about capturing Kony — they are about developing a “Never Again” generation of young people who use all the tools at their disposal, including social media, to stop atrocities. However, this is done by uniting around a single cause with a high degree of success. Large-scale awareness campaigns must heed this lesson. You do not get people to care by describing a generic issue, but by calling for specific action related to that issue. Some worry that these new activists will be disillusioned if Kony is not captured this year. More likely, military advisers will stay put and IC will claim further victory through the lack of withdrawal. “Stop Kony” is the rallying cry, but serves as the penultimate, not ultimate goal.

I’ve been involved in public awareness campaigns seeking to mobilize 100-500 million activists on issues of Poverty, Climate Change, Education, and the Food System. All have had far more resources and celebrity support than Kony 2012; none have had nearly the level of social media success. Discuss.

Related articles

• Lessons from the Oregon Ducks and #Kony2012 (futuremediachange.com)
• ‘Kony’ Video Prompts 100 Million Views and Some Criticism (prnewsonline.com)
• Opinion: Why Kony 2012 created the wrong buzz – CNN.com (worldwright.wordpress.com)
• Kony 2012 Director Responds To Critics (perezhilton.com)

Two recent videos showing stone throwing (literal and metaphorical) at the KONY 2012 video and the organisation behind it, Invisible Children.

Al Jazeera as it reports on the reaction of people in Northern Uganda as they watch KONY2012

Charlie Brooker takes a “Behind the Music” look at the Invisible Children charity. For people outside the UK, this is a segment from a weekly live British TV show “10 O’Clock” Live that looks at the big news stories of the week through the lens of comedy. Sort of like the Daily show if it was done differently and only once a week, but get my meaning.

What do a shoe and apparel billionaire and a college football team have to do with an indicted African War Criminal and a skyrocketing viral video? Everything.

In January, I cheered with old and new friends, long lost relatives and thousands of strangers as the Oregon Ducks took the field at the Rose Bowl. In February, it took eight hours before I encountered my first Ducks fan in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He had never seen a game live or on TV, but he knew the Ducks prevailed in Pasadena and that, “The helmets were the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen!” In March, I sat with a friend and colleague to watch a video about LRA leader and indicted war criminal, Joseph Kony that garnered 70 million views in four days. We cringed, we mocked, we attempted to hide welling emotions at crescendo moments. Then we took to Twitter and our inboxes to monitor the steady stream of support and criticism directed towards Invisible Children and Kony 2012.

The three events over three months made one reality clear to me: the “Attention Economy” has arrived with a thunder. As Jason Russel says in his hyperbolic viral hit, “The world will never be the same.”

Kony 2012 oversimplifies on issues of policy; it reinforces dangerous societal viewpoints of Africans and the regions problems; it promotes a “White Man’s Burden” hero culture; it makes outrageous and unsubstantiated claims about Invisible Children’s impact and the campaign’s potential. Yet, it is beautiful and brilliant. Anyone who cares about building movements of positive change should study this film, and their investigation should start with understanding the, “Attention Economy.”

If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics teaches, or what rubrics such as “the information age” suggest. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions – stars vs. fans – and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality.
(Emphasis mine)

Those prescient words began scholar Michael H. Goldhaber’s, 1997 paper, The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net. At the same moment designers and marketers at Nike’s sprawling campus in Beaverton, Oregon were launching a 15 year experiment to test Goldhaber’s premise. The proving ground would not be the Internet, but a football field in the small city of Eugene, Oregon, home of the ferociously named Oregon Ducks.

The Attention Economy Gets Wings

Nike co-Founder and 1959 Oregon alum, Phil Knight had secured a deal with the school — he would provide a blank check to support the athletic department’s stadium and facility upgrades in exchange for Nike having carte blanche design control for the football teams uniforms and merchandise. While the university gained an indoor practice facility in the rainy state (though fans proclaim, “It Never Rains at Autzen Stadium!”), Nike Creative Director, Todd Van Horne, and top designers like Tinker Hatfield had the chance to create a football powerhouse through the principles of the Attention Economy, as brilliantly detailed by Michael Kruse last August in, “How Does Oregon Football Keep Winning? Is it the uniforms?”

They would create the Oregon football brand from scratch and reinvent it, not every season, but every game! The palette was wide open to the point that every Ducks ticket now carries a color notice for fans, “Oregon v USC: WEAR BLACK.” Players were adorned with silver wings and shiny helmets. Nike rescued a struggling paint and design company from the verge of collapse to create a whole new variety of paint made of glass beads and a shimmering proprietary coating dubbed, “LiquidMetal.”

The fans hated the new look, the sports writers skewered and the opponents mocked. It all went according to plan. “If you’re purposely trying to stir up the nest and increase visibility, you want them saying something,” Hatfield commented in an interview for SportsBusiness Journal. Viewership steadily increased, the team drastically improved and while the vitriol spewed at the ugliest uniforms in sports, teenagers across the country slid closer to their TV sets to get a look at what the Ducks were wearing that week. One of those kids named LaMicahel James from Texarkana, Texas would lead the team to three straight Bowl Championship Series appearances including a Rose Bowl victory. When the Heisman Trophy finalist was asked why he considered Oregon when so many better and local colleges wanted him, James responsed, “I loved the uniforms.”

Nike and the University of Oregon created an enduring brand through constant iteration and a great football team through packaging and adherence to the Attention Economy. Knight’s crew understood that eyeballs and discussion were more important than money or even product quality when it came to trouncing the competition in the shoe game. They wildly outbid all suitors in 1984, not for Michael Jordan’s endorsement, but for his attention — or, more aptly the attention he would bring to the shoes on his feet. While a roster that included the best basketball player of all-time suggested that attention could translate into success, the Ducks project allowed the Nike team to test attention currency with a struggling small-market team. And that’s the short story of how a team of silver-helmeted underdogs became football greats and an Oregon t-shirt found it’s way to an Ethiopian who knew nothing of the sport.

The Attention Economy Goes Viral

Now to the story of three young filmmakers and activists who discovered an under-reported war in Northern Uganda and spent the next nine years trying to gain the world’s most valuable currency: attention. They made 11 films about the the LRA’s brutal tactics of abducting children and turning them into child soldiers and sex slaves. They built a fledgling charity and methodically grew a movement. They gained powerful allies and enemies in the process. They used films, speaking engagements, marketing and social networks to procure attention for the issue. Then the band of activists directed that attention to Capital Hill, at times in partnership or at least in concert with the world’s largest NGOs.

This is how change happens and in the hyper-connected information economy, attention is the currency that unites people and prods politicians. Invisible Children can be accused of being naive on several points, but not on this. In fact, they are clearly far ahead of their peers. Jason Russel’s first-person account is brave and foolish — the two usually go hand-in-hand. It is not the story of Uganda’s internal strife, nor Central Africa’s bandits and poor governance, nor child soldiers, nor domestic politics. It is the story of three people whose lives intersected with tragic and wonderful consequences: a young father from California; a child from Uganda; a vicious Warlord. It is not policy dissertation or an activist’s power analysis. It is a well told story that asks the viewer to participate. The average age of those viewers according to YouTube: 13-24.

Kony 2012 has succeeded by being controversial. It will anger many and be dismissed by others, but it has deeply engaged youth. It has also succeeded by stirring criticism. As the Ducks discovered, dissent is not anathema to attention. In fact, dissent and disdain are vital ingredients. 4500 stories have been written about the film in the past 24 hours, which also means 4500 stories have been written about Kony and the LRA. The frenzy has given attention to countervailing voices like the stinging critique by Michael Diebert on Huffpo and eloquent response by Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire that has been seen by 150,000 people and counting.

Like the Oregon-Nike experiment, Kony 2012 is a startling and stunning success in the Attention Age. We should spend less time denouncing that reality and more time understanding and shaping it. We can decry Kony 2012 for misinterpreting the current political reality of Uganda or wish equal attention was focused towards the ongoing massacre in Syria, the plight of women and the coming food crisis in the Sahel, but as my friend recently returned from West Africa commented, “That is not this guy’s fight.” Thoughtful critiques should continue, the more ink spilled the better. However, in the midst of our doubts, we should remember that there were millions of young people who had never heard of the International Criminal Court, Joseph Kony or even Uganda a mere four days ago. Russell’s passion ignited theirs. That should be celebrated. Not because they will, “Blanket the night” on April 20th, but because these youth will seek to prove Kony 2012′s grandiose claim that in a connected world they can and will stand up for each other. In a world of Bieber and Twilight they choose to turn their limited attention to human rights and justice. I for one welcome their limitless optimism.

We in the activist community can spend weeks tearing down Invisible Children’s effort. Or, we can choose to accept the new reality of the Attention Economy and get to work. Goldhaber forecasts in his paper, “If you have enough attention, you can get anything you want.” What do you want?

President Obama will answer questions live shortly (5:30 PM) in a Google+ Hangout, and simultaneously shown on YouTube. A small selection of the 228,000 people who submitted questions will join Obama in the hangout.

“I’ll walk into the Roosevelt Room across the hall from the Oval Office, take a seat, and kick-off the first-ever completely virtual town hall from the White House,” the president wrote in an email sent out by the White House last week. “This is going to be an exciting way to talk about the steps that we need to take together at this make-or-break moment for the middle class.”

The live video chat caps a week of social media engagement that the White House planned around the State of the Union. The president will answer video questions that have been submitted through YouTube and will invite some of the questioners to “hangout” and participate in the conversation, which will be live-streamed through the White House Google+ page.

(via ABC News)

This is a marriage of YouTube’s ongoing efforts to interview world leaders and engage their users, and a major push by Google to spur adoption of Google+ and set the social network apart for its “Hangout” feature. The rapid growth of Google+ and the strength of the Hangout system makes Google+ pages for organization a solid choice for live video chats that could replace mass conference calls many nonprofits rely upon.

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“Dear Mrs. Cain, don’t pay attention to these pathetic husbandless women who are jealous of women like you in happy long-term marriages,” a supporter from California writes. “These vindictive women can’t find a husband or keep one. They are like stalkers who try to latch on to any man who shows a bit of kindness or attention to them. When these unstable women come out of the woodwork to make accusations about Herman just say, ‘Honey, get a life, I believe my husband.’ We want you to be our First Lady Mrs. Cain!”

[via TPM]

This crazy GOP field makes it Christmas everyday. Attack the “Pathetic husbandless” women of the world, that’s how to get the female vote. These are testimonies in support of Cain from online supporters, but it appears the campaign approves these messages, which in effect makes them the campaign’s words. Campaign web properties including social networks will continue to be fuel for opponents fire, making constant moderation vital. Or, you can just scrub your website of mentions of radical dominionists like Michelle Bachmann.