Web Strategy & Politics

I Want My Twitter TV!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:40:00 +0000

I have been an occasional user of Twitter for a couple years now. I have enjoyed reading the conversations. I have enjoyed the links, pics, and other media shared among the 100 + people I follow. But I am not yet satisfied. I am aware of the whole hashtag thing, but come on, is that the easiest solution out there?

I have eclectic tastes. I love politics. I am a news junkie. I am in to this whole social media thing. And I'm a new dad. But, I am not in to each of these things at the same time all the time. I want channels through which I can view the respective tweets of those I follow in each of these groups.

Better yet, don't make me build my own list of who to follow - I'm lazy. There are organizations associated with each of the topics of interest to me that I already trust. Given the openness of the Twitter API, why don't organizations start creating their own channels? Washington Post, CNN, etc - one of you should own the political Twitter channel, providing a widget of the more prominent political tweeters. A VC, TechCrunch, where's my VC / startup channel?

At the least, blog aggregation sites like HuffPo and Gawker should provide Twitter streams of their authors...

Social Media and US Diplomacy

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:35:00 +0000

Foreign policy is, “a set of goals outlining how the country will interact with other countries economically, politically, socially and militarily, and to a lesser extent, how the country will interact with non-state actors.”

Emerging new media channels are proliferating rapidly throughout the world. The catalyst of conversation is evolving, as the people are interacting in new and innovative ways given this emergence. Anyone can be a journalist by posting on a blog. Anyone can be a photojournalist by posting on Flickr, or other photo-sharing site. And user-generated video delivers breaking news. Even the microblogging site Twitter has had an impact in world affairs, with its coverage of the recent Mumbai attacks. The power of new media channels in shaping the grassroots conversation continues to grow with each instance of its effectiveness.

The image established of a particular policy initiative has always been determined in large part by the interactions that take place among the people. Historically, government officials have enjoyed the bully pulpit from which to drive these conversations. Television, and news agencies in particular, have had a strangle hold on driving these conversations, providing a relatively secure channel through which government officials can communicate their message. Few other resources for information or perspective were available outside this channel.

This is no longer the case. Even in more controlled nations, new media continues to penetrate and burrow holes in whatever veil of control the respective government seeks to establish. Thus, new media is an emerging channel that drives the conversation among the people.

Given this paradigm shift in the manner in which the conversation is shaped, a new opportunity has emerged through which diplomacy and foreign policy initiatives can be supported. New media is now a pivotal channel through which foreign policy is executed, whether or not a particular government shapes it. It is time the United States invested in leveraging this new channel to deliver upon its foreign policy.

I am not alone in this thinking - Victoria Esser's article on social media in the Politico provides additional support behind the idea of enlisting social media in US diplomatic efforts.

(T)he U.S. cannot afford to wait while these channels are perfected in order to direct them in service of President Barack Obama’s priority of renewing America’s global leadership. Indeed, Mr. Obama can use the themes and technologies that helped him generate huge grass-roots support in his presidential campaign to build support for America on the world stage.

As Clinton discovered and Obama exploited, social media is far more than just a new channel to communicate to your target audience. The interactive conversation that can be fostered allows for listening as well as talking, providing a wealth of opportunity with the right message and mix of tools to develop and move a community.

Control of the message is still paramount, but the control cannot come from restricting the tools or even the speakers. The control comes from having a solid, heartfelt message that lives and breaths in every dimension. Bill Clinton emulated his adoration for doing good by the American people despite his personal transgressions by drinking every opportunity he could to interact with and connect to everyday voters, carrying his image over those rough patches. Obama emulates his drive towards objectivity and constructive debate in everything he does, from not only allowing but enabling the conversation to continue far beyond his control. This is providing the cover necessary to thrive despite a few missteps in recent weeks.

Given Obama's positioning as being transparent and open, a strong social media strategy supporting these basic tenants could go along way in reparing the damange done in recent years to the US image abroad...

From Tech to Disney to Obama: Theory on Leveraging the Organization

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:25:00 +0000

I am fascinated by the evolving interplay of entities, and how this interplay is enabling more productivity (often mirroring natural patterns). In this vein, I see parallels between the emerging methods of improving effectiveness of web-based software, Bob Iger's strategy that is driving recent successes at Disney, and Obama's "West Wing on steroids". Each is leveraging organizational structure in new and different ways in order to improve overall productivity.

Today web-based software must employ resources for others to build upon, enhance, tweak, and/or embed to allow the collective intelligence to grow the idea beyond what one person or one compay can do. I have written about this idea before.

In a story in the most recent Fortune (not yet online), Bob Iger's strategy at Disney to invest in brands that span across Disney's many businesses is chronicled. Take movies - family films under the Disney banner have a strong likelyhood of transferring from film to tv to merchandising and so on. However, even the larger hits fromDisney's Miramax and Touchstone production houses rarely grow revenue outside the division. Thus, he focuses on opportunities that can be amplified throughout the business. He is driving execution across the organization, greatly enhancing the profitability of single ideas / brands.

Obama seeks to enable strong leaders to manage issues that span across the various agencies of the Executive branch. "(P)roblems like global warming sprawl across several agencies, often requiring a sort of uber-Cabinet member – a czar – to confront them." Similar to Iger, he expects to tackle issues by attacking them head-on and across various agencies, holistically, instead of piece-by-piece.

Time will tell if Obama's efforts will be successful. But, given natural references, recent tech trends and Iger's success at Disney, the model has legs...

Bureaucracy Kills Innovation: WH Friends, Fight the Process!

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:32:00 +0000

Anne Kornblut's article on what the Obama staff is encountering as they arrive to work is a little too kitchy, and misses a critical fundamental problem with our government bureaucracy - it is not designed to keep up with technological innovation.

David Almacy, former Internet Director under Bush laments:

"The White House itself is an institution that transitions regardless of who the president is," he said. "The White House is not starting from scratch. Processes are already in place."

With all due respect to David, it is precisely these processes that must be killed. This type of bureaucracy is in direct conflict with the continued expedience of technological innovation. As the speed with which innovations arise increases, more pressure is placed upon this conflict. Either the innovation will be stifled, or the bureaucracy must fall.

White House staff members must be able to use Facebook, as 80 million constiuents are there. They must be able to use their personal email accounts, as the personal continues to intertwine with the professional. And they must remain mobile and not be tied to desktop PCs.

Allowing this institutional b.s. to bar White House staff from the tools that have become the mainstay of the young urban professional will undoubtedly stifle the innovation and enthusiasm the campaign generated, and reduce the Executive Office of the President to little more than a democratic version of the Bush administration - surely not what the country needs right now...

NYT Misses the Ball: Brand Advertising in SocNets

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:26:00 +0000

In yesterday's NYTimes, an article was published specifically about Procter & Gamble's use of Facebook advertising, but more generally about how traditional brand advertising is failing within social networking. Duh.

P & G is arguably one of the most sophisticated marketing operations out there, and yet their attempts thus far to advertise their brands within social networks are still rooted in traditional impression-based brand advertising.

And when they try to take advantage of new “social advertising,” extending their commercial message to a member’s friends, their ads will be noticed, all right, but not necessarily favorably. Members are understandably reluctant to become shills. IDC, the technology research firm, published a study last month that reported that just 3 percent of Internet users in the United States would willingly let publishers use their friends for advertising. The report described social advertising as “stillborn.”

The opportunity is not about "shilling", its about creating a relationship with the customer. In the previous world, attention could be attained by simply getting your logo in front of the user. Over the years, more channels were offered, but the strategy was still the same - the more impressions the more attention. However, as attention continues to fragment and channels proliferate, this "impression-based" approach is losing its effectiveness, especially within a social networking environment.

The opportunity of cultivating a brand within social networking lies in fostering an emotional relationship with your customer. This has long been a powerful yet overlooked strategy available to the average marketer. Creating an emotional bond is difficult, and can be costly given the few tactics available to drive such a strategy (prior to social networks). The power and effectiveness of impression-based advertising coupled with the high cost of generating this emotional bond pushed a relationship-based strategy off the budget. However, with the connected nature of social networks, such a strategy has become much less costly, once a chord is struck. Given the diminishing power of impression-based advertising, striving for an emotional relationship with the customer is how brands of the future must connect.

To illustrate this point, let's look at a couple brands that arguably have done a great job of creating an emotional bond with their customer, and what has happened specifically within their Facebook Page presence.

Apple has roughly 180,000+ fans throughout various Pages within Facebook, most of which appear to be fan-created (i.e. free to Apple, or rather a result of their other relationship-driven marketing tactics).
Five Guys Burgers, a Mid-Atlantic "fast casual" burger joint, the 300-location chain, garnered over 16,000 fans to date, presumably at no cost to the company.

Don't just show yourself to your customer, connect with them...

Update: It appears the Wall Street Journal made my argument in today's paper, albeit in a much more eloquent, in-depth manner...

What If...

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:29:00 +0000

What if the conversation among the Pakistani people turned in support of a thorough investigation and strong government response to the Mumbai attacks?

What if Pakistani Americans urged their friends and family still living in Pakistan to enter the conversation?

What if the Obama folks cut a list of Pakistani-Americans from their 11 million-strong supporter list, and asked them to reach out to their friends and family, and provided them a few resources to pass along to help seed the conversation?

New media can drive more than just a money and vote machine....

The New CTO: Fostering Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:34:00 +0000

One of the many discussions going on about President-Elect Obama's transition is that of his promise to designate a new cabinet-level CTO. While the "beltway" is focused on Secretary of State and the like, Silicon Valley and the rest of the internet / technology crowd is curious to see if Obama makes good on his promise, and what the agenda of this new entity might develop. My hope is that this new era of unconstrained innovation (led by Facebook's application platform, Apples iPhone Application environment, among others) is brought to government.

President Obama has a tremendous opportunity to tap the grassroots energy developed throughout his campaign to foster innovation within government by leveraging technology. Activate the community to innovate. Provide APIs to government data and information to enable interested parties to create applications, gadgets, etc., that improve transparency and enhance the citizens' experience with government.

If you wonder what could happen with such openness, so do I. But recent examples prove such a model unleashes a cornucopia of innovation that is beyond what a single mind can fathom. Just take the new iPhone application, Ocarina. Launched just over a week ago, the application allows you to create a flute-like melody by blowing into the iPhone microphone. You can also listen to the melodies created by others. Silly, yes. Valuable? Maybe not. But already, users have listened to over 3 million melodies.

An open innovation platform provides the opportunity for the people to go beyond their vote, in influencing government. They can have a direct hand in precisely how government executes its mision and services.

Obselete Advance Tactics

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:46:00 +0000

I did advance for President Clinton (event logistics management). One of the first keys you learn is to make sure the space was smaller than your crowd. If it wasn't smaller, make it at least look smaller by funneling the crowd to where the press is aiming their cameras.

All sorts of tactics can be used to help "shrink" a room, from riser placement to blocking empty areas with large flags, etc. Unfortunately, now that every attendee has a camera and the ability to post their photo on Flickr or worse, many of those tactics are not quite as effective.

Case in point: Marc Ambinder just posted this photo from a McCain rally today:

Ouch.

Social Media and the Butterfly Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:48:00 +0000

I came across this article in the New York Times - another example of the paradigm shift in the fundamentals of communication. Johnny Lee posted a video on YouTube of his ideas on how to bring a virtual reality feel to consumers, using existing technology available via Nintendo's Wii console.

That video, together with others that Mr. Lee, now 28, posted on YouTube, have drawn people to the innovator as well as his innovations. Video game companies have contacted him and, in September, M.I.T.’s Technology Review named him as one of its top innovators under 35...

Contrast this with what might have followed from other options Mr. Lee considered for communicating his ideas. He might have published a paper that only a few dozen specialists would have read. A talk at a conference would have brought a slightly larger audience. In either case, it would have taken months for his ideas to reach others.

We are just now seeing few, isolated examples of how social media is radically changing the manner in which communication is conducted. Bring to this the Butterfly Effect, and just think how such a paradigm shift is radically changing our world...

Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:58:00 +0000

So, I have not posted my ideas here in a while. Truth be told, people have started paying me for them, so sharing them here might diffuse their price / effectiveness.

Nonetheless, I do have a few in production now that are kind of interesting. The first is the Rock the Vote Action Center. Readers may recognize a few theories I have thrown about on this blog. The idea with this one is to allow users to make phone calls on the campaign's behalf, from within Facebook. Of course, all activity is communicated to your friends... Things have been going great with this one - Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic wrote a pi ece on it.

Another interesting app is our Voter Registration tool. The idea here is to check whether or not you (and your Facebook friends) are registered to vote without having to enter your information (it all comes via Facebook). In the background we run a match of the user and their friend's to a national voter file. If the user is not found, we guide them through the voter registration process. We also display the user's friends into three groups - registered, not registered (i.e. found on the voter file but not registered to vote) and missing info.

I like this one a lot, but it did nothing like what Facebook's own campaign produced... We shall see what a few tweaks for next cycle might bring!

More to come (I hope)...

Sides of the House: Understanding the Change

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Have you seen this or this or this? It is bubbling in to something big and nasty, and "we" are on the wrong side (assuming this letter truly reflects toe Democratic position)...

The following chart compares the adoption rates of the internet from 1995 - 97 versus the recent rise of MySpace and Facebook. The starting point for both was around 2 million users.
Social media is bringing upon the constituency a rapid evolution. Understanding of where it is heading and what it means is lagging. Few understand the opportunity, let alone the consequences. And even fewer of those folks are in decision-making roles, whether it be government, corporate or otherwise.

Issues such as this are going to bubble up fast and furious over the next few months and years. Societal change is so fun to watch!

Social Media as a Fractal

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:14:00 +0000

I have been thinking about this social media phenomena, as it matures and crosses the chasm from the early-adopter / tech geek crowd to mainstream. The idea that I am wrestling with is that the primary behaviors being exhibited thus far are just the top layer of a much more deep and complex evolution currently underway.

I have written before about Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's social technolgraphics ladder. Many others are trying to define frameworks to explain what we are seeing. However, my theory is that these frameworks are too simple to explain what is happening, especially as such behaviors expand into the mainstream. And, in order to meet the needs of the ever-expanding social media user base requires a more complex model. And yet, such complex models already exist - in nature.

My thesis is that, as these tools proliferate and organization forms on its own, social media mimics more existing biological structures (i.e. fractals) than such simple structures as a ladder or even a pyramid. Just with biology, such self-organizing structures allow the sum to be better / smarter / stronger than the parts. This framework association is not limited to a particular part or behavior of social media. It reflects the entire social media landscape currently emerging.

This premise is supported by the success thus far of recent API's, such as Facebook and (dare I say) Twitter. Build the core infrastructure of your idea, and then offer integration points for others to permeate from your original idea, making the sum much more valuable than the part.

Wikipedia's strength also supports this idea. The sum of thousands of wonks / writers / editers / and even readers has self-organized in a manner that the sum of all the artciles created is much more valuable than the individual writings.

Obama is another loose example, as he attempts to cede control to his supporters, allowing them to self-organize.

So, as entrepreneurs, investors, corporate decision-makers, political strategists etc., evaluate opportunities within this space, ask this one fundamental question: "Does it enable the sum to be more valuable than the parts."

I am not the first to discuss this (for others, go here or here), nor do I claim to have a strong understanding of bio-structures. I just sense a connection here...

Upon the Shoulders of Giants

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:31:00 +0000

Nick Carr asks in the most recent Atlantic, "Is Google making us stupid?" (not yet available on the web). Carr writes:

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition...The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It's becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

It is a brave new world as the singularity nears. Matt Asay over at CNET thinks this is not a good thing. My take? Bring it on. Using the same tenants of Anderson's "Free" argument, offloading aspects of our brain processes to technology allows us to focus on other activities, still uniquely accomplished by the human brain. Just as when something becomes free, such a newfound freedom opens up a whole host of yet unforeseen opportunities. We won't know what it means until it happens, as our ability to predict and comprehend beyond is limited.

Thus, upon the shoulders of giants we again will stand...

Anderson's "FREE" & Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:11:00 +0000

Chris Anderson is right. Again. The Long Tail author is publishing another seminal tome on the theory that costs are dramatically reduced given the efficiencies of the websphere, promulgating a whole new economy of "free". From Wired in February:

Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.

Another example: Social Media integration. A year ago this month, Facebook launched its API platform, allowing third-party developers to create applications that can easily be integrated into existing tools and features of the Facebook community. This opportunity has spawned over 26 thousand applications, generating over 1 billion downloads by Facebook users. It is free to use. However, the API is a "walled garden", providing no interoperability with other social media networks, creating a cost to the developer (e.g. their time).

This idea of providing an API to enable interoperability between your website / web service and others is taking off. Even the New York Times is jumping on the band wagon - they are working on an API to allow developers to import NYT content into new and yet-to-be-thought-of applications for disseminating content.

Earlier this year Google launched its Open Social product, with MySpace, LinkedIn and most others (except Facebook) on board. Their intent is to provide the infrastructure to allow developers to code their applications once, and then provide the tools and resources necessary to support the interoperability among the various social networks, websites, etc., current and future.

Facebook had attempted to license (i.e. charge) other social networks to take advantage of their platform. Bebo bit, licensing the platform last December. However, given Google's move, Facebook has been forced to go a step further, "open sourcing" their platform for anyone to use. Thus, like Google's Open Social, use of Facebook's API platform is now free for other social networks to integrate. The only cost is their time.

Facebook's obvious expectation is that other social networks will take the time to integrate, therefore offering Facebook's growing developer community more value for time spent developing within the their API platform.

The efficiencies of the internet continue to shrink even non-monetary costs (in this case, a developer's time). Interesting times...

Beyond Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:50:00 +0000

In an effort to keep up on what is going on in the social media space, I read. Lots sometimes, less others. There are a couple articles I found interesting recently.

First, this one by Heather Green and Stephen Baker. The key point I take from it is that social media has crossed over to the mainstream. Though only a quarter of the US online population reads blogs once a month or more, the continued proliferation of tools and services to connect are dominating attention and dramatically evolving online behavior.

While only a small slice of the population wants to blog, a far larger swath of humanity is eager to make friends and contacts, to exchange pictures and music, to share activities and ideas.

And this shift in online behavior is overflowing into the off-line. I am a neophyte within this space, as compared to my younger colleagues, and yet even I do not walk in to a meeting without first looking attendees up on LinkedIn and/or Facebook. It is a rare event where the guest list isn't published online beforehand. I have been in a bank a handful of times, only to cash the random check that was not direct deposited. And, I have not bough a newspaper in years.

This article by Jackie Peters, further summarizes the impact of these behavior changes on marketing and communications:

Our job now is two-fold: make sure the fakers who claim they get it, but really don’t, don’t screw things up, and educate clients, potential clients and our peers so they are able to make intelligent decisions in selecting an agency and implementing a social media strategy.

The fundamentals of this space are crystallizing, separating the effective from the ineffective. More is certainly to come. So now what?

August 29, 1936

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:22:00 +0000

In another installment of how control is lost in American politics, we have this gem:

I am curious has to how the McCain camp will defend against a birthday. John McCain turns 72 on August 29th - less than 10 weeks before election day.

Facebook is Dead? Long Live Facebook! (in Politics)

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:37:00 +0000

I commented on Colin Delaney's post about the failure of Facebook to deliver on its value to political organizations & campaigns, but I wanted to elaborate.

As I wrote, no one has yet really invested in a well-thought-out strategy. The features of Facebook are limited. By features, I am referring to Groups, Pages, Events and even Profiles. Active communication tools such as email messaging are hamstrung on each of these, to suppress spam. Interactive features do not go beyond basic discussion boards and comment threads. These tools become no more than glorified blogs. Thus, maintenance of these has been left to lower-level staffers and often interns within the campaign's internet team.

But the application platform is much less inhibited. You are able to do whatever your creative mind can think of within the canvas page. And then you are able to connect your application to the existing features of Facebook and, more importantly, adapt your application to the behaviors of the existing Facebook community. Is Facebook's discussion board infrastructure too limiting? Build your own. Is your application constrained by Facebook's strict emailing policies? Figure out a way to motivate users of your app to provide you their email address. The opportunity to connect with the 25+ million US Facebook users is limited only by creativity.

And yet, Obama and Clinton have made minimal investments of time and energy in their applications, and McCain's is nowhere to be found. Non-presidential apps have been few and far between.

To consider the value of political activism via Facebook a dead end at this point is premature. Many people (and development firms) have tried to take advantage of the application platform. But the folks that "know" politics, know what works and what does not in the offline world, have yet to commit investment dollars to the space. The people that get the opportunity (and get politics) are most often on the internet team, buried within communications. Those that control the purse strings don't yet understand the opportunity of Facebook and the greater social media space, and therefore are reluctant to invest when tactical opportunities are presented...

Full disclosure: I helped produce Clinton's Hillary Gifts - what I expect(ed?) to be the beginning of a longer-term investment...

Obama, Abercrombie and the Social Web

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:25:00 +0000

My how even the smallest blunders get noticed. Obama's advance team missed a small little nuance this evening, but the social web was watching. The three most visible people directly behind Obama were all wearing Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts. A&F couldn't have paid for better placement.

During the latter part of the Clinton administration, I traveled the country doing advance, essentially event management. The primary focus of advance (other than a happy president) is a good picture (tertiary was a happy press corps). Much of the effort and discussion leading up to an event surrounds the image that cameras will capture.

During Obama's speech this evening, a traditional "crowd" backdrop was used - fill the area behind the speaker with enthusiastic supporters. Great care is often taken in selecting those folks. You have to be sure the right mix of folks is represented. You have to make sure no one is sleepy or yawning. And you even have to pay attention to their clothes, to make sure the colors work. Obama's advance team missed the A&F logos...

Prior to this election cycle, such a gaffe would barely have been noticed. A few political pundits may make a remark or two, but barring any other direction to the story, such an error would be a non-issue. Not this cycle...

As this search of Tweetscan shows, many folks are talking about it. This guy took a screenshot and posted it on Facebook. Patrick Ruffini sent out a tweet. I Twittered about it as well. Even though I mispelled Abercrombie, I was part of the cacophony. Rather than sulking away, this gaffe reverberated throughout the social web, going far beyond the few picky folks like me that notice such things.

What does this mean? In this instance, probably not much, other than a nice brand hit for A&F and further visual support to reiterate the idea that Obama = young college supporters. But it is yet another example of how the communications dynamic is changing...

Fred is Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:29:00 +0000

Fred Thompson's presidential site is dead. Nothing there. Given the negligible cost of a redirect, why not push the occasional user somewhere, the RNC perhaps? JohnMcCain.com? I know there isn't much traffic, but isn't it worth a little effort to direct the user to something more useful than an error page?

This makes me wonder what is going to happen to the hundreds of thousands of connected supporters that exist among the various groups for each of the major candidates? Campaigns are known for leaving nothing behind - everything is spent by election day. However, these communities will still exist. What should be done with these assets?

Voter data (aka, the voter file) is another similar asset that at one time never lived beyond election day. Then, first by the Republicans and now slowly by the Democrats, the data each election cycle is being collected and stored for use next cycle. This data has become a powerful tool, as it has grown far beyond a simple list of those registered to vote. The data set now supports everything from ad buying to fundraising, and more innovations are on the horizon.

Given that most of these networked communities are locked within their respective social network, this data cannot be appended to the voter file. How can additional value be extracted after the balloons fall?

Traffic may not be enough to invest resources or thought, but Obama's 780,000 Facebook supporters, or McCain's 49,000 MySpace friends warrants at least some thought... What are your ideas?

Freak Show Update

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:25:00 +0000

I just caught this in yesterday's Politico:

...(I)t has only been in this campaign cycle that we have seen the liberal echo chamber — from websites like The Huffington Post and cable commentators like Keith Olbermann — be able consistently to drive a campaign story line. In the past, it was only the conservative echo chamber — Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh — who regularly drove stories in new media and old media alike. This is a huge shift.

In my initial post about the Freak Show, I referenced another article by Vanderhei and Harris. It appears as though they are coming to the same conclusion as I have: social media is an opportunity for progressives to (finally) contest the conservative supremacy of talk radio...

Agree or disagree?

Groundswell: The Engagement Ladder

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:31:00 +0000

Within politics, the idea of an engagement ladder has been around for decades. You begin to engage a potential supporter through a small, low-hurdle action, such as a short, ID survey (who do you support, etc.) or nowadays an email sign-up. The idea is that you then harvest those that filter through this initial hurdle with a larger ask, such as posting a yard sign. Eventually, you grow the supporter's engagement to volunteering their time and, ultimately, giving money.

Notice any parallels from this figure from Groundswell?
The social web allows the political engagement ladder to elongate in both directions. The gamut of actions from which you can choose to employ to grow your pool of supporters becomes vastly larger. The low-hurdle asks no longer have to be as active as a phone survey or even an email sign-up - now you can ask them to download a virtual gift within a social network (see Hillary Gifts).

Once engaged, the actions available can be much more broad than in the offline world. Campaigns are already allowing supporters to make phone calls from home. May more opportunities exist to activate and engage the supporter through social media (well beyond my ideas or existing examples).

How can the ladder be expanded?

Groundswell: Dems Dominate

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:00:00 +0000

I added another book to my list - Groundswell. Each of my clients is getting a copy - it's a great discussion of the social media opportunity. Most important, it looks at the phenomena not from the technical perspective, but from the direction of how social media is changing the relationships people have with their friends, colleagues, family, etc. Ultimately, these changes will also impact a brand, presidential campaign, or any other organization that relies on marketing and public relations to get its message out.

Li and Bernoff discuss their Social Technographic Profile, a breakdown of the various behaviors exhibited by users within the social web. Marketers (and campaigns) can use this breakdown to focus their social media efforts, as each tool and technique provides value to a different type of social media user. From a political perspective, the breakdown is:

The data suggests Democrats have a healthy advantage over their Republican counterparts in the areas of Spectators (those that primarily consume the content) and Critics (those that enjoy opportunities to react). Thus, providing opportunities for your community to view and digest new and interesting content will feed the Spectator (i.e. content aggregation). Ensuring your efforts provide ample opportunity to comment and discuss is necessary to feed the Critic's needs (i.e. comment tools, discussion boards, etc.). I am just scratching the service here of what this data means, but you get the idea...

I have long had the sense that Democrats & Progressives dominate the social web, as the Republican & Conservative movement has long dominated talk radio. This, in conjunction with the tremendous opportunity brewing on the business & marketing front, has driven me to help major Democratic political organizations realize and seize this growing opportunity. It's always nice to find empirical data to support your gut.

There is a ton of great information in this book, for anyone curious about the social web and how it will impact your organization, if it hasn't already. More to come on this one...

Freak Show

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:05:00 +0000

Interesting article in yesterday's Politico, laying out a few rational reasons as to why the Clinton machine continues to churn, despite calls to end it. Democrats in the last two cycles have been obliterated on the ground, given the hardened GOP "freak show," as Vanderhei and Harris refer to it, that has been developed and cultivated over the years. From the article:

The last two Democratic nominees, Al Gore and John F. Kerry, were both military veterans, and both had been familiar, highly successful figures in national politics for more than two decades by the time they ran.

Both men lost control of their public images to the right-wing freak show — that network of operatives and commentators working mostly outside of the mainstream media — and ultimately lost their elections as many voters came to see them as elitist, out-of-touch, phony, and even unpatriotic.

Can the freak show continue to dominate the conversation, given the power of social media? Does new media make such underhanded efforts more or less effective?

Cheney's Sunglasses

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:21:00 +0000

Heh, here is another example of the dramatic loss of control over the message. The White House published this photo:

Look closer. See anything amiss?

Thousands within the blogsphere did - data minus control. And the buzz is loud...

Update: CNN dug in to it as well. Ouch.

Social Media Middleware

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon Thomas) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:27:00 +0000

In reading Fred Wilson's recent post about liquidity, a thought came to mind, less from the financial perspective and more from the consumer's. Is there an opportunity for a social media middleware?

He is right that the internet is "decomposing into a vast array of micro-services". I am finding my attention further fragmented as I explore the latest tool - LinkedIn to Facebook, and now to Twitter.

Value is derived when these services are consolidated / integrated respective of how the users could / should / are using them - certainly an unlikely scenario exploited by an M&A play such as Yahoo / Microsoft, or any of the other potentials. I and many others have discovered tools to allow me to compound my activity from one source to another - Twitterfeed pushes my blog posts to Twitter, and Twitter's Facebook application pushes my tweets to my Facebook status. His point that M&A cannot work in this context is evident.

My thought is that opportunity exists to develop a middleware separate from all of these various sources, with the user in mind. This middleware will allow the user to access the various resources as they need to, all from a central platform - i.e. an RSS reader for the social web.

Such a service will not provide the liquidity Wilson advocates, as an M&A or IPO event may. However, if this nut can be cracked, such a service will allow these micro-services to evolve and continue delivering on the value proposition that first grabbed the attention of the early adopter. Surely that can be monetized?