Upon the Shoulders of Giants

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

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

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?

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

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...

Freak Show Update

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?

Freak Show

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

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.

Crowdsourcing: Radiohead's Latest Experiment

Crowdsourcing is an idea that has been gaining momentum as a key component of the evolving social web. (I previously wrote about it here.) Various attempts have been made within the political world, but none that execute on both sides of the coin.

Side #1 - User-generated Content: The most notable example of this is the YouTube debates last Fall. Users from around the country were encouraged to upload their questions for the candidates to YouTube. This was an interesting endeavor that has been mimiced in various ways since, such as Clinton's AskHillary project, among others. But, when it came to selecting questions, users were left out in the cold, which leads us to side #2...

Side #2 - Rank by Community: Users of the community review submissions and vote on them, Digg-style. The more votes a particular entry gets, the higher it appears in the rankings - i.e., the crowd decides what is emphasized.

A great example of both sides of the coin is Radiohead's latest Nude Re /Mix experiment. The band has made 4 different tracks available via iTunes - a voice track, guitar, strings and drums. Fans are encouraged to download the tracks via iTunes, and create their own mix of the song, and upload their versions to radioheadremix.com. On the site, fans are also encouraged to vote on their favorite mix.

Thanks to Matt Dickman for the original thought. More from Matt:

This is a fantastic idea as a way to allow fans to get involved with the Radiohead brand, create something that is their own and join in a community of other, like minded fans. More companies, bands, products, teams, etc. need to look at this model as a way to create deeper engagement. Providing raw assets that can be used to create original, personal by-products could be powerful.

This is an interesting opportunity for Radiohead fans to participate in the music process, rather than just listen. Kinda has a democratic (note the small "d") ring to it, doesn't it...

Al Gore's We Campaign: Online Marketing that Misses the Opportunity

I wanted to build upon Allison Fine's laments about former Vice President Al Gore's We campaign online strategy. My focus here is on opportunities for improvement, given the changes in the social web over the past 12 - 24 months.

There are plenty of opportunities throughout the site to submit your email address - very traditional online marketing. However, email is becoming a less relevant tool in daily communication, especially as spam continues to grow. Such a one-to-many medium allows you to disseminate your message, but does little to develop a relationship with your constituency. Newer, more effective tools are available today, often for free, and many more are on the horizon.

Once you submit your email address, they ask you for more information - physical address (for direct mail), cell phone number (for text alerts), etc. They have added numerous links to invite your friends, again only via email. They even included a tool to share aspects of the site on popular sites such as Digg, Facebook and Del.icio.us. Each of these is an essential tactic for any sort of online advocacy. However, each of these tools and techniques has been in the mainstream for a while now, and none go far enough towards where we are heading - to the social web.

On the video front, they have a few clips available, including their latest ads. Again, examples of traditional online strategy. However:

• They did not cross-post their clips on YouTube.
• They do not have a Facebook Page or Group
• They do not have a MySpace Page

I do not mean to assume that every organization must behold all of these platforms. However, an advocacy initiative must be where their audience is - that is the whole idea of advocacy. And today's passionate audience is most certainly on one or all of these platforms, among many others.

In addition to message placement, the campaign's action center is also quite limiting, given the current online environment. Again, each action begins and ends with one-to-may forms of communication - send an email to your friends, write a letter to the editor or to your Congressman, etc. There are no opportunities for the engaged audience of the campaign to interact among themselves.

• No opportunities to share their thoughts and ideas
• No opportunities to collaborate and provide feedback
• No opportunities to share success stories or other pertinent information valuable to the overall audience

They don't even have a blog, let alone a comments tool and/or message board. Again, I do not begin to preach that any organization must have all of the above. But for an advocacy initiative in this day and age, some of the above tools must be employed. At least, the free ones...

These tools allow your message to grow beyond you. Yes, you cede control, but the power that is unleashed far surmounts whatever costs are incurred. For an advocacy initiative, especially one that already enjoys a large and passionate constituency, equipping the audience to evangelize your message far beyond the confines of your organization is essential - an opportunity the We campaign appears to be missing so far...

More on Control

From Yesterday's Washington Post:

"What we're watching is an evolution away from Washington's control, away from the power that big money and big donors used to have a monopoly on," says Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat and former Senate majority leader.

Adds Richard Viguerie, often called the "funding father" of the modern conservative movement for his effective use of direct mail: "The establishment, the power structure, the Karl Roves, are losing control of the process. There's a new center of power developing."

What I find fascinating is the latency in understanding this diminishing control. By continuing to retain control, campaigns stifle what energy exists...

Paradigm Shift

Patrick Ruffini offers a similar message that you have heard here, that there is a fundamental shift in the manner with which political campaigning is conducted.

All of this — the massive resource advantage Obama now enjoys — is the result of a decision to trust in a fundamentally more deeper and more resilient medium for building support for his campaign: a word of mouth network that can only be corralled online. Hillary Clinton trusted the establishment and is on the brink of losing. The GOP candidates who leaned on the party’s Wise Old Men lost.

We saw the first concrete results of adaptation in 2004 with Dean's prowess in online fundraising. Adapting to, rather than fighting the new paradigm of political campaigning with the social web has enabled Obama to out-raise everyone. More importantly, he has taken the opportunity a step further, out-mobilizing everyone through the use of technology to boot.

The political web is now reaching the vast majority of the primary electorate with dozens of touchpoints throughout the cycle — few of them controlled by the campaigns themselves — and is reaching all the people who will do anything beyond vote in a general election.

The impact goes beyond just politics. A new channel for communication is maturing, with a power to persuade unlike any other. And, the right message radiates with an ease never before seen. The social web exponentially changes the balance between effort in and effort out. The message has even more paramount than ever.

The ramifications of the success of political web strategy this cycle will be felt for years to come outside this space. There are certainly areas where politics follows distantly behind traditional marketing. Even some of the techniques finally being employed with much success this cycle have been around for years. However, there are few events as public and as closely watched as the US presidential election. Just as the message radiates, so too will the methods...

Nader Analysis

Yes I am bitter. Not only did he let George Bush into the White House in 2000, he cost me a job (I was working for Al Gore at the time). But, rather than write my own diatrbe on the lunacy of his persistence, I defer to Micah Siftry's in-depth look of the Nader candidacy given the power of today's political web.

My favorite quote:

Nader is at most a Web 1.0 candidate in a 2.0 era, seeing the web as a cheap tool for broadcasting ("transmitting") his views to others and missing entirely the power of the network. He may argue that all sorts of issues are being ignored by the major party candidates, but the tools for mobilizing people around neglected issues have never been more potent--if you are willing to work in concert with others, give up some control of your message and embrace the democratic public sphere that we are all collectively building.

Mitt's Video Post-Mortem: No Wonder...

Michael Kolowich, one of the folks involved in Mitt Romney's video operation offers this dissection of what happened on the web video front. What struck me is how his language continues to be about quick returns on investment, versus seeding the conversation as required by the social web:

If part of the idea is not just to inform but also to inspire people to act (give money, sign up, give us their email, etc.) then YouTube was weak at the “call to action” part.

Politics has never been an A = B environment - you never get your return on investment at first blush. There are tools at the politico's disposal that do drive specific action, but there are just as many that are about laying groundwork. I argue YouTube is a channel for laying groundwork towards the masses.

Providing rich video content on YouTube enables the campaign to reach a large, mass audience. Given the cacophony of content available (opposition clips, foibles, etc.), it is critical that the campaign be loud and proud within this channel, to ensure their message is heard.

He continues:

The most remarkable statistic of all is that more people watched the Romney campaign’s clips on Mitt TV than on our YouTube channel.

Sorry, Michael, but the reason your channel was more popular was not because your video was better, more tailored, etc. It's because you spoke to your zealots rather than the masses. In politics, the zealots get you close, but in the end it is all about reaching the masses. The fact that your YouTube channel was less popular was more a symptom of a more pressing problem - that your campaign's message was not inspiring the masses.

Was your Mitt TV content also published on YouTube? Assuming all content is cross-published, YouTube views should exceed your internal video site. You should be reaching folks that don't necessarily engage in your campaign, but at least hear your message. Focusing on such "seed" channels is just as necessary as focusing on those channels that drive action, in the age of the social web...

TSA Gets in the Game

Interesting - the TSA now has a blog. From the New York Times:

The T.S.A. blog has links to independent bloggers and real news reports, including negative ones. It also has personal blogs by five employees of the agency. But its most notable feature is the lively give-and-take, without refereeing, except for monitoring for obscene language and egregious crack-pottery.

This is an impressive foray into the conversation. It is already helping improve things, particulary around consistency as to how various airports implement regulations. What a great way for the government to use its constituency to help get the job done. Crazy how the TSA can launch a blog that is more open than most campaign blogs...

Its the Economy, Stupid!

A little off topic, but I had to share this article from the Politico. My favorite point:

As the economy was rising late last year as a major issue for voters, McCain in New Hampshire delivered this grenade, with its pin still in it: "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," he said. "I've got Greenspan's book."

Let's hope this gets the attention it deserves.

Example: Driving the Zealots

From The Nation:

The speech has now drawn over 268,000 views, after about 36 hours online. By contrast, a shorter, spicier clip of Clinton and Obama's debate clash currently has under 50,000 views, (after half a day). About 43 percent of viewers have come from links on Obama's social networking page, MyBO, which encourages supporters to share videos and information with their friends...

These are impressive numbers, especially given the closed, proprietary nature of MyBO. This is a great example of directing your army of zealots to take action and drive the conversation. Imagine what could be done with an integrated approach within an existing social network...

Is the Discourse Improving?

From The Nation:

Barack Obama delivered a riveting speech about America's moral crisis this weekend, calling for a united movement to overcome the nation's moral deficit and mounting economic inequality. Political observers praised the address and reporters covered it -- 53 mentions in major papers -- yet it's been largely overshadowed by the escalating fight between Obama and The Clintons, which still dominates this week's media narrative..

While cable news shows gorge on campaign sparring, Obama's uplifting speech is absolutely dominating YouTube. The 34-minute address from Ebenezer Baptist Church is currently the fourth most viewed video in the world on YouTube, trailing two Britney Spears clips. Not only is that unusual traffic for a long political address – people also like it. On Tuesday, viewers voted it the second most "favorited" video in the world. It also drew the second highest number of incoming links, a key indicator of web interest that drives Google page rankings...

At SomethingAwful, a popular general interest site that proclaims the "Internet makes you stupid," one user wrote that the speech was so good it was worth posting in a non-political forum, attaching the video and text. The single post drew more than 3,000 new viewers in a day.

The speech has now drawn over 268,000 views, after about 36 hours online. By contrast, a shorter, spicier clip of Clinton and Obama's debate clash currently has under 50,000 views, (after half a day)...

This kind of YouTube speech is also distinct because it enables voters to appraise a candidate directly, without any filters. News coverage is larded with polls and meta-analysis, while top bloggers increasingly talk strategy. Even the debates are often clogged with moderator framing and false premises. So despite our proliferating media, it's hard for most voters to hear directly from the candidates who would be president, unless you move to Iowa. (Or make C-SPAN your new appointment television.) But it looks like when the speech is available and the candidate is inspiring, people still want to listen.

Interesting example of how the social web can be used to manage the conversation. Is this just the first of many examples of how the social web is improving the political discourse? I hope so...

Army of Zealots

More on the article by Mark Walsh of MediaPost:

Fervent online support doesn't necessarily translate into votes, however. The campaign site of Internet favorite Ron Paul drew by far the largest share of traffic among 15 presidential candidates, at 37.9%. The next closest was Huckabee, with 16.4% as of December, according to Hitwise data cited by Borrell. Paul hasn't come close to winning any primaries.

There is a different between the supporter and the zealot. Certain campaigns and certain messages connect with both, either or neither. Zealots are rabid fans. They latch on, believe every drip of rhetoric, and rarely let go. Supporters, however, vote. Unless the zealot army generates supporters, the campaign goes nowhere. Howard Dean had the zealots in 2004. Ron Paul has the zealots this cycle. Obama had them early on, and has done a decent job employing them to generate actual supporters.

There is another layer to the numbers presented above. We must not just look at traffic; we must also look at behavior of those that do engage in the conversation. How does a campaign employ the army of zealots to generate supporters? Are potential supporters turned off or engaged by the zealot conversation?

Blogs and Turn-ons

The headline is a stretch, but it's the catchy ones drive the traffic...

Michael Turk, Fred Thompson's Internet Director offers a great post-mortem on their operation. Sure, he's helping shape the legacy of his efforts, but his points about blogging as an opportunity to open up the conversation are spot on.

Nobody accused us of endorsing the random beliefs espoused by the occasional nut, and nobody on the campaign had to answer a single press call (that I am aware of) about the blog or anything said on it.

Rudy's blog doesn't allow comments. Romney's gets a few per post. Ron Paul just recently launched a blog (despite the fact that blog software is largely free). He currently gets between a handful and a few dozen comments. ...There are just as many Democrats who need to learn this lesson (cough, cough, Hillary, cough, cough).

They need to build online operations so they invite people to the discussion rather than turning them off of it. [get it? turn-ons? I know, a stretch...] Get candidates to write, in their own words, frequent posts. Understand that a ground game is critical, but it must be viewed in terms of ROI. A thoughtful, honest post from a candidate may be discussed and passed around by thousands of people online. It takes little time to write if it's sincere and not obsessive studied and focus grouped.

I don't think this indicates a lack of supporter enthusiasm as much as it indicates that the campaigns have created a blog with nothing to say on sites that are so scrubbed of interesting content they're almost sterile. Most of the posts are rehashed press releases, rehashed campaign e-mails, or occasionally a video so overscripted it becomes almost completely unwatchable.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I do have one more angle to add, however. The role of the campaign web strategist is not just to manage and maintain internal operations. S/he must also be a two-headed manager, an internal advocate for both internal and external online activity. Given the limited reach of campaign sites, the external focus is what needs attention among today's presidential online efforts...

One Half of One Percent?

In previous posts, I have lamented how increased investment in online strategy is sorely needed among our political campaigns. I have also touched on how campaigns are behind the curve. Mark Walsh of MediaPost writes of a new study soon to be released by Borrell Associates that examines 2008 online political advertising. From Walsh's story:

(T)he tiny .5% share of political advertising going to the Internet is well below the 9% chunk Borrell estimates the medium gets of ad dollars overall. It garners at least 5% in all other ad categories, including automotive, travel and health.

This is crazy, especially considering how efficient the social web is for promoting a political idea. Campaigns are underfunded, when compared to traditional marketing efforts. Coke has a marketing budget in excess of $400 million a year, whereas the major presidential campaigns will spend less than $150 million. Therefore, it is critical that resources be employed efficiently. What is more efficient than a preexisting, connected set of networks, complete with numerous tools with which to engage and converse?