Fred Stutzman's blog

4,548 people listening, but no one talking

2008-04-22T16:24:40-04:00

In his most recent post, social media expert Stowe Boyd has called out John Edwards' now-defunct new media operation. The problem? When Edwards left the presidential race, he also vacated most of his impressive social media apparatus. Boyd states:

So, you opt to try to exploit the edglings by signing up to Twitter, and writing a blog, and all that newfangled web stuff, trying to mine the potential there with ersatz involvement and cheesy, inauthentic participation: cramming old one:many messaging into a conversationally rich environment.

Then, you drop out. And proof that it is totally bogus, you just stop. Bam. No 'thanks for the memories', no 'see you in the funny papers', and certainly no ongoing involvement, since after all, there really was no involvement involved.

There's a good bit of vitriol in Boyd's critique, and I disagree with a number of the points. The Edwards operation seemed very authentic, driven by experience and fundamental belief in the power of the technology. However, it is damning to look at Edwards' Twitter page, with 4,548 followers, and see that it was last updated 5 months ago.

An interesting post - read it here.

The Social Filter

2008-03-28T12:02:20-04:00

Yesterday's NYT turned its gaze to the patterns of political connection young people are establishing in social media. In an article entitled Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On, Brian Stelter describes a techno-political paradigm-shift: young people now turn to the social filter to find political information, as opposed to the traditional "professional" filters of the MSM. Nothing surprising or groundbreaking here, as we're saying the same things about "digital natives" that we've been saying about bloggers for ages.

Such a pronouncement benefits from nuance; young people have a high degree of diversity of communication practices. The expectations and tools they use vary between age ranges and network clusters. As most young people are plugged-in in one way or another, this demographic's network is very dense - making the social filter remarkably efficient. Of course, the social filter is also mysterious, prone to scamming, and biased towards spectacular events.

Rather than concentrating on the network aspects of the social filter, I'd like to address why it works on a personal level. That is, in an age where social political-speak is almost taboo, why do we feel comfortable sharing political information in digital forms? There are two main factors, identity and multiplicity of context, at work here (bear with me, I'll explain in human terms soon).

As a point of comparison, our "average" older person uses relatively few communication channels. Phone, fax, email - tools that are often depersonalized, tools largely "learned" in the work environment. It is hard for us to separate our social expectations from the tools we use, so some of us may feel uncomfortable pushing political messages in these forms. Our average "younger" person uses multiple communication tools; their toolset includes the traditional vehicles, and is extended to include new venues (social networks, IM) and forms (video, presence apps). Young people embrace these new tools because they're more personalized, lower effort, and "learned" in a social context. Email is the tool of work, a wall post is the new tool of personal communication.

For most of us, the personal space is the space where we can exert political influence. As social media is identity driven, it is inherently personal - making it a perfect space for political discussion (or link sharing, etc.). And because social media has many contexts - it isn't just a work, or school space - we're able to negotiate the right messages to send in the right contexts. Political organizations are savvy to the multiplicity of context; as a results, political messages come in many forms - spectacular (Macaca), serious (Obama's "More perfect union"), all-appealing (a politician making a gaffe), etc. Based on our uses and expectations of the social media spaces, we decide the appropriate venue and channel to pass these messages along.

Ultimately, the notion of the social filter is somewhat misguided. The social filter isn't solely a place to find information, but rather a place where information exists in its own right. It is its own channel, context and form, one that is multiplex and personalized. The social filter doesn't replace MSM; it is its own media. All medias have form: the newspaper has paper, TV news has a blinking screen. Social media has between us, in conversation.

The Social Media Voter

2008-03-06T11:43:59-05:00

When it comes to social media, I'm a digital native. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter - these services are deeply integrated into my daily life and, to a certain extent, the lives of my friends and family. The fact that I am a native makes me well-suited to explain the technology and its uses and benefit; the cost, of course, is losing the non-native perspective.

A national election is about meeting the voter on their terms; in the technological sense, this means using most-accessible tools to reach the broadest number of potential supporters. The continued primacy of email and the campaign website serve as proof. Of course, to take a Gladwellian stance, all voters are not equal: some are highly motivated connectors, people who will knock on virtual doors or forward the message. Perhaps for this motivated bloc of connectors (and those trying to reach them), social media is nirvana - an interactive medium that empowers the motivated connector.

Throughout the course of the 2008 election, I've been trying to suss out just what role social media plays in the campaign. I'm most likely to agree with the perspective of (fellow techPresident author) Patrick Ruffini, who feels that social media contributes to momentum; voter activation occurs both online and offline, and social media can certainly compound interest, serve as a fund-raising vehicle, drive votes, etc. Feel-good YouTube videos about Barack Obama reinforce opinions more than they create new ones, perhaps.

In this election, a significant number of voters are interacting with candidates in the social media space. The millions of views on YouTube, hundreds of thousands of Facebook friends - these contribute to the information ecology around the candidate, and in certain cases they serve very important functions (i.e. Allen '06). So who is the social media voter? Obviously, there are many types, but I thought I might illustrate a few. Caveat - this is not a systematic analysis, but rather the result of a brainstorm, so take it with a grain of salt.

Type 1: The Window-Shoppers
Based on analysis from various Pew projects, almost 70MM Americans have a profile on a social network site. Countless million more have viewed online videos. The window-shopper represents the vast majority of social media voters; they participate from the sidelines - viewing videos, watching friends take political stances in social networks - but they do not use social media to pass political messages. Regardless, the election information ecology reaches them, perhaps not on a regular basis. Pew estimates that nearly a quarter of Americans get some political information online; this might give us an idea of how many window-shoppers there are out there.

Type 2: The Toe-Dippers
The Toe-Dipper is a next-step from the window-shopper, as they actively communicate their political interests in social media. They'll Facebook support a candidate or use traditional communication channels (email, IM) to pass along viral political messages. The overall volume of messages passed is limited, however. Toe-dippers may skew younger as the pool shrinks as compared to window-shoppers. For example, Pew reports that 3% of Americans have befriended a candidate on an SNS, with 8% of those age 18-29 doing so.

Type 3: The Communicators
The communicator is somewhat of a digital native, using a blog, forum or social network to broadcast political information. This doesn't mean the communicator is necessarily a political blogger, but they are someone who uses a social media venue to pass along political information from time-to-time. In the Blogads 2006 survey, 17% of political blog readers also had their own blog; the communicators are the important producers of the social media ecology.

Type 4: The Mavens
Continuing to narrow, we find mavens at the center. These social-media mavens are early adopters; they are among the 14,000 following Barack Obama on Twitter, the people creating and uploading political videos to YouTube, and the folks who have made their Facebook profiles all about the candidate. The mavens made friends with John Edwards on 14 different social network sites. The mavens also tend to be clustered; I know quite a few of them. Of course, mavens serve an important role getting viral campaigns started, communicating with other powerful communicators, and serving as a testbed for new initiatives.

What is interesting is that between the groups, we see similarities. Window-shoppers and mavens may donate online, visit the candidate's website, subscribe to mailing lists, etc. In my opinion, the turn isn't consumption of information, but production and communication of information. Of course, any attempt to taxonomize such a wide swath of the population is problematic. I've drawn on survey and intuition to create the list above, and you may agree or disagree. The purpose of making this list, however, was to conduct a thought experiment about the types of social media voters out there and where they fit in to the ecology of a national election.

Social media is interesting, of course, because everyone who wants to have a say can theoretically do so. The campaigns, with well-funded media campaigns, are more equal than others, but messages that are distributed through mavens can, and do, get national play. In a national election, however, campaigns can't ignore the facts - that most of us are window-shoppers at best, that TV is as important as ever, etc. We mavens may not be as important as we hope, but over time, we may see a reshaping of the system as more voters emerge as social media natives. Of course, this is a long-term shift, and somewhat inevitable.

Social networks and youth voter activation

2008-01-07T09:38:54-05:00

Cross posted to Unit Structures.

Since the 2008 races began, we've collectively watched the social technology space for emergent technologies that connect or motivate potential voters. I've looked for silver-bullet tools - a great Facebook app that brings the candidate to the voter, or a new type of social network tool that gets out the vote, raises funds efficiently, etc. Largely, I've been disappointed; the candidates haven't developed too many cool or innovative tools, and the neat third-party ideas haven't gained all that much traction (with a few notable exceptions). Even last week I was telling friends and reporters that this was the YouTube election, which unfairly writes off the whole social network space.

After watching the Iowa returns and reading blog and press accounts, I'm starting to see a potential third way for social network technology. Caveat, I don't have ethnography to back this up, this is just my opinion, but I think there's something here. The old model of social network sites and campaigns proposes that some uber-tool, say a great Facebook app, leverages all sorts of information and eventually gets out the vote or raises funds. That is, the end goals of the electoral process can be attacked programatically, that all problems are solvable with enough data. A nice idea, but not true. Facebook's Beacon and Social Ads are insightful here; even with unlimited data and great programming, machines attempting to "socially" influence fall short; the algorithms and points of interaction just aren't human enough. I don't want to join Blockbuster just because I'm served ads with the face of some guy I've met a few times, and I probably won't switch my vote just because a candidate is spamming my newsfeed.

Lets step back for a second and think about where social networks excel: Birthday reminders. When I log into Facebook, I can see whose birthday it is today, and within a few seconds go post a "happy birthday" reminder on my friend's wall. I'm happy, my friend is happy, and the whole transaction has cost me no more than thirty seconds. What can politicians learn from social network birthday messages?

Social networks encourage interaction, and the birthday wall posting is an example. There are two important factors in this transaction: the ease with which you can see your social network (the friend list) and ease and multiple methods which you can contact that friend through the network. By multiple methods, I mean wall posts, private messages, poking, superwall, etc. Unlike email, which is single mode and carries all sorts of social context, multiple methods of contact enable one to choose an appropriate space for messaging, one that fits the context. As political messages are sometimes controversial, having multiple message spaces enables the individual to consider the best space in which to pass the message, and act accordingly. That is, humans can effectively tailor their message to the space.

So what does all this mean? Social networks provide excuses for interaction. An articulable friend list makes it easy for one to envision and contact their network. And multi-modal messaging makes it more appropriate to pass political messages; if you're not comfortable directly soliciting new friends to come to a fundraiser via direct, personal message, you could post a casual invite on their wall. Because there are multiple contexts and expectations, the humans can suss out the best venue for their messages and act accordingly. This effectively means more messages, passed by humans, in more appropriate, less spammy contexts. This means humans influencing humans, virtual shoes hitting the pavement.

One large question remains: how does this cycle of connection get started. In the technocentric vision, there's some great algorithm in the sky that motivates us. In the scenario I'm posing, activation comes from far more traditional means: advertising, media coverage, empathy to candidate, etc. A potential connector is reached via the media and decides its time to start working for his or her candidate. The connector turns to online information sources, subscribes to mailing lists, Googles the candidate, and starts passing messages to like-minded friends in the social network context.

The obvious downside of this approach is that it reifies existing models, it blasts the technocentric approach, and it treats social networks as a message channel, not some revolutionary new social space. That is, its somewhat reality based. Simply because a generation uses social technology it does not mean that the entire playbook has to be thrown away. Young people see ads on TV, they page through the newspaper left open in the kitchen, and they pick candidates for reasons similar to anyone else. What is different about the social network users is that once activated and motivated, they can very effectively leverage these high-availability, low-spam, popular message networks to influence friends and contacts. In fact, the throwaway, simple nature of messaging in social networks is its virtue; a 2500-word email with graphics doesn't work, but a young person may decide to click through a wall post or private message from a friends. And of course, once a cohort of supporters are identified, it becomes trivial to be always connected and activated in an SNS.

Web 2.0 technologies have long forced candidates to step back and take their hands off, there's only so much they can control. Social networks are just another example; supporters will use the networks for purposes they devise. The record youth turnout in Iowa wasn't caused by social networks, but one can imagine that wall postings, reminders, events, and personal messages kept young people activated, motivated and interested. It wasn't a huge group, a Facebook app, or some algorithm that provided motivation, but rather interpersonal contact in appropriate venues. To this extent, social networks are part of a communication ecology, albeit a very important one for a very important demographic. Candidates should consider how best to leverage this reality, as it provides both a challenge and tremendous opportunity.

Facebook rethinks Beacon

2007-11-30T00:19:39-05:00

As reported in various blog and print sources, Facebook has announced changes to Beacon, the controversial ad program. According to the reports, there will be a change to the story posting flow, requiring users to approve a story before it is sent to the Newsfeed. This does address some of the concerns regarding information leaks through Beacon.

In a nutshell, when a user on a third-party site sets off a Beacon action, they will be presented with the popup. If the users does nothing, the story will be sent to a queue, rather than to the Facebook. The next time a user sets off a Beacon action, they will be presented with a list of stories to send to Facebook, and can select or reject stories as they deem appropriate. Facebook will also make more clear the posting flow, promising prominent notifications when one logs in and is presented stories to approve.

Notably, there is no mention of a global opt-out, which I believe is a mistake. One of the critical problems with Beacon is it breaks boundaries of privacy between sites, and Facebook provides no apparatus for restoring the privacy. As a result, cookie-based pageview tracking will also continue to occur.

While the response to MoveOn's call has been tepid - 50,000 signees, the response to Facebook Beacon is still coming. Beacon isn't evenly distributed around the web; one may not use Fandango or Epicurious or read Techcrunch, meaning there are a lot of Facebook users out there still waiting to step on these Beacon privacy landmines. This is a distinctly different situation from Newsfeed, which was extremely direct. This story will evolve; it will be more of a rolling problem.

Cross posted from Unit Structures

ABC News Friends Facebook

2007-11-26T14:23:15-05:00

The New York Times reports that ABC News and Facebook have partnered in the creation of a new US Politics application. The application, originally designed by Facebook as a simple way to find and support politicians who have created profiles (the sparse Canadian version is here), boasts charts, polls and interactive news features, with content supplied by ABC.

Reaction around the blogosphere is skeptical, with CNET's Caroline McCarthy wondering if a political news app will attract attention. Facebook, like other social media properties, is very interested in capturing meaningful election eyeballs, but they have had little success so far.

In the time I've had to explore the application, I've been impressed. While the app is anything but world changing, it is full of good information, provides a place for debate and discussion, and seems to respect the audience. No, this app won't compete with Zombies and Top Friends, but it is a good proof-of-concept for an application that provides real informational value.

MoveOn Targets Facebook's Controversial Ad Programs

2007-11-21T10:49:02-05:00

MoveOn, the online advocacy group, has turned its sights on Facebook's new advertising program, Beacon. The group is asking Facebook users to sign the following: "Facebook must respect my privacy. They should not tell my friends what I buy on other sites--or let companies use my name to endorse their products--without my explicit permission."

Launched two weeks ago with much Fanfare, Beacon is part of a two-pronged effort by Facebook to "change media", something founder Mark Zuckerberg insists happens "once every hundred years." Working with partners, Facebook's Beacon reports user actions in sites such as Fandango and Epicurious back to the individual's Facebook profile. These actions are then advertised to your friends via your Newsfeed, theoretically influencing your friends. Pundits and users alike fear this is a dangerous erosion of privacy.

MoveOn's petition attacks Facebook's use of user likeness in advertising - that it is inappropriate for Facebook to use our identity for advertising without compensation or our explicit approval. MoveOn is also compiling stories of Beacon flubs, such as when a gift one buys online is reported to the gift's intended recipient.

I've spent some time analyzing Beacon, and came away quite troubled. If you're interested in reading more, here's a post I wrote about privacy implications, and a post exploring just how much information is collected by Beacon. As you might imagine, there's a lot of information being shared, much like with Doubleclick or other analytics programs. Of course, the key difference with Facebook is that the information is tied to your identity, your social network, and your expectations of privacy in the service.

View the petition here.

One Million Strong For Your Name Here

2007-10-29T10:43:08-04:00

The New York Times reports on Stephen Colbert's Facebook Group "1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert." Like anything Colbert, one should be cautious when drawing serious inferences, but the report begs a few questions. First, what does this "support" mean, and what does it say about political use of Facebook?

In the article, Mr. Colbert's groups is compared to the now-famous "(Barack Obama) One Million Strong for Barack" group, created months ago by supporter Farouk Olu Aregbe. While the growth of Mr. Obama's group has slowed (with about 380,000 members), Mr. Colbert's group enjoys 1.2 Million members - with continued growth certain to be spurred by media coverage. In fact, Mr. Colbert's group may very well continue to grow - I wouldn't be surprised if the group ends up with 4 or 5 million members. If it does, it will establish a new precedent for group size in Facebook, to my knowledge there's been nothing close to that size.

At a political level, comparing Mr. Obama and Mr. Colbert is patently unfair. To join Mr. Obama's group (or the other mega-political group, "Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)") requires an explicit statement of political beliefs. Joining Mr. Cobert's group signals that you're a fan of his hilarious TV personality. Of course, there's nothing wrong with this - but to comapre Obama and Colbert is truly to compare apples and oranges.

But what can we learn from these groups? Like Mr. Colbert's group, Mr. Obama's group grew extremely quickly, benefited by viral information spread in Facebook Newsfeeds. This is the main mode of information discovery in Facebook - the majority people who joined the group were not explicitly searching for a Stephen Colbert group (there are over 500). Rather, they were presented with the group their friends had joined, and elected to join as well. Of course, this group capitalizes on maximum name recognition of Mr. Colbert, currently out on the road promoting his new book.

So what if a candidate created a Facebook group, and in every speech and in every email they promoted the group - would we see a similar, viral phenomenon? While not on the scale of Mr. Colbert's group, I find it quite likely that a campaign could "engineer" significant growth of a group. The question that remains is what good the group serves. If these groups are little more than the "bumper stickers" on our profiles, are they worth candidate time and effort? I'm skeptical, but I'm not yet ready to write groups off completely.

[Updated] Why are Candidates Ignoring the Facebook Platform?

2007-10-10T09:56:01-04:00

In June, techPresident ran a story Note to Candidates: There's This Thing Called "Facebook." In it, TP associate editor Josh Levy pointed out that while a few supporters had rolled Facebook apps for candidates (Edwards*, Romney), only one campaign (Obama) had taken the initiative to roll its own application. Fast forward almost four months to today, and you might be surprised to find that ~~pretty much~~ almost nothing has changed.

This morning, I surveyed candidate Facebook applications and found that Obama is still the only candidate to roll his or her own app. (Updated: the Giuliani campaign points out an official application, updating the count to two campaigns) Edwards, Romney, Giuliani and Ron Paul have supporter-created applications (Ron Paul leads the pack with 3), and a number of generic apps, including Politicker, Facebook's US Politics and Newsvine's (now MSNBC's) Election '08 pull other support.

So why are candidates ignoring the Facebook Platform? I've developed a few Facebook applications, and I can attest that the technical bar is quite low. Therefore, if the problem isn't technical in nature, why are candidates purposefully staying away from the Platform?

The first argument might be that Facebook isn't providing enough carrot with the stick; while they sit in a dominant place in the social network space, the ROI of repurposing contributions towards development cost isn't enough. First and foremost, Facebook excludes the storing of all profile data of application users - meaning that campaigns may not store or use FB applications for list-building, nor can they mass-message supporters through the application. Application messaging is pull or peer-spread in nature, which certainly isn't a bankable strategy in modern politics. On the wider web there's growing sentiment that Facebook Apps fail to live up to their potential.

Another argument is that Facebook isn't doing enough to attract candidates; we see evidence of an outreach effort as Facebook yesterday convened meetings and offered a number of concessions to candidates. There have been strategic gaffes: by creating a Facebook Politics application, the company has competed directly into the market they are trying to serve. And of course one can't fail to mention the company's preference towards Obama - are we seeing a blackballing due to this preferential alignment?

Perhaps what we're really seeing is the bar candidates set towards Web 2.0 outreach. If a service offers easy sign up, guaranteed messaging and outreach, and effortless maintenance, (YouTube, etc) candidates will embrace a service. But if there's a gamble, which is clearly the case with a Facebook application, candidates will hold off. And while pundits and bloggers will bemoan the conservative stance towards trendy technology, one can't help but wonder if candidates are actually leading here. As we've watched Facebook apps degenerate over the past few months, politicians may have made the right choice by not trying to join the fray.

* Disclosure: I built the Edwards app on spec; not as a statement of support.

MTV's Network for Advocacy

2007-09-27T12:29:08-04:00

With a hearty publicity push, MTV has launched think.mtv.com, a community fostering youth advocacy. In much of the coverage of the site, it has described as a youth social network - and while it's true the site has social networking, it's overly reductive to think of it as just that. With the site, MTV hopes to create a content nexus for its target market: young people in high school or college. Co-funded by Viacom and the Case, Gates, Goldhirsh, and MCJ Amelior Foundations, think.mtv.com makes an earnest effort to connect youth networks around relevant problems and interest areas.

The site's goal is to translate interest into action; to that extent, users are expected to log in, create a profile, and engage in social media production. Users can upload audio, video, blog posts - with the explicit goal of creating a media-sharing network around an issue. The issue areas are particularly wide - Discrimination, Human Rights, War and Peace, for example - but creating a place for users to experience media and share affinity for their topic area. Users are then asked to "take action" on their issues - the type of action fairly generic as it stands (Email a representative, sign a petition), though the potential for more-innovative forms of action are there.

Stepping back, what we see is MTV trying to verticalize advocacy; through their framework, individuals can come together around many different interpretations of issues, and those eyeballs can be channeled into action. And while I'm positive on the effort, MTV will face a number of issues in keeping this property in front of users. Of course, as a media behemoth, it is quite unlikely that viewers will pass through this election season without hearing of the site; with VJ's and media and sports stars sharing content on the site, there will be interest. Perhaps that will be the seed content necessary for creating sustained interest in the site, though users might grow wary seeing a star on Cribs one day, and think.mtv.com the next. MTV will also face a direct challenge establishing itself as a place for social media content - YouTube and pre-established blogging/media sharing networks have huge distribution and reach advantages.

These criticisms aside, the underlying effort, and the execution is laudable. MTV and its partner foundations have create a timely portal for advocacy. By realizing the P. Diddy alone doesn't get out the vote, MTV is leveraging the many-to-many angle, which is sensible. There's engagement in learning about issues from a friend - this will be an interesting experiment in leveraging microcontent and small-group persuasion. To accomplish these outcomes, though, MTV must be aware of the role it plays in the larger ecosphere of social media, and foster opportunities for advocacy content to flow between networks like Facebook or Myspace's. I'm hopeful, however - I think MTV has laid the foundation for something interesting. Let's hope the youth show up.

Social Transparency in Wikipedia with WikiDashboard

2007-09-11T18:35:29-04:00

As we've seen, Wikipedia is a valuable source of information about presidential candidates. For all of the candidates, Wikipedia claims a prized top-five spot in Google results, with candidate entries frequently trafficked and edited. Reminiscent of Virgil's Wikiscanner, a team of scientists in the Augmented Social Cognition Research Group at Xerox's PARC have invented WikiDashboard, a tool they claim provides social transparency to Wikipedia. About their invention, the team states:

The idea is that if we provide social transparency and enable attribution of work to individual workers in Wikipedia, then this will eventually result in increased credibility and trust in the page content, and therefore higher levels of trust in Wikipedia.

WikiDashboard acts as an overlay of Wikipedia, providing a series of graphs showing active editors, periods of intensity, and how those periods of intensity correlate to editing behavior. The idea is to provide Wikipedia readers with a set of cues about the type of edits going on in an entry. Looking at the the Wikidashboard for Hillary Rodham Clinton, we can see that while Wasted_Time_R (a fella we interviewed here) has consistently put up a volume of edits over time, we've seen many other users edit the article intentley for brief periods of time. The cues provided by the visualization might tell us to be skeptical of the article of a new editor is currently contributing lots of edits. The PARC folks have provided a guide for understanding these visualizations on their blog.

Aside from being really cool, WikiDashboard might be particularly useful for understanding Wikipedia entries not particularly amenable to consensus, such as presidential entries. Here are two visualizations, Ron Paul and John Edwards:

I'm impressed. Check out WikiDashboard here, and find out more at the Augmented Social Cognition Group blog.

Finding Value in Candidate Social Networks

2007-07-10T13:24:41-04:00

Recently, Sen. Chris Dodd's presidential campaign announced the creation of a "social network aggregation" site - one that ostensibly would allow a visitor to browse Dodd's presence on all social networks at once. Using MyLifeBrand, an alpha-stage social network aggregator tool, the team put together a page which is available here. While Read/Write Web is overall positive on the value proposition of MyLifeBrand, Matt Safford of Appscout directs some well-founded criticism at Dodd's implementation.

Safford's criticism, like my own, revolves largely around the usability of the MyLifeBrand experience. To view Dodd's site, one must first register with MyLifeBrand, and then join the Dodd community. Dodd's MyLifeBrand is essentially a collection of iFramed links to his homepage, social networking profiles, and Wikipedia entry. How MyLifeBrand encourages cross-social network information sharing is still somewhat of a mystery to me. Overall, I was disappointed with the experience - though I'm certainly aware it is an alpha.

However, this raises a larger issue, one that campaigns will wrestle with as we progress toward 2008: how does a campaign deal with a multitude of profiles, and is it worth the effort to attempt to unify them? This question deserves serious thought; as campaigns use valuable resources to maintain profiles across many sites, and even build application-specific tools, how do they get the most value out of their efforts?

To frame the discussion, lets look at two different approaches. The first approach is candidate-property-centric; the campaign develops tools and properties and invites the community to take up residence. Barack Obama's my.BarackObama.com property is an example of this approach. The second approach is audience-centric, in which the candidate attempts to engage the audience where they reside - in social networks and other applications. John Edwards' ubiquitous presence in social networking apps is an example of this strategy.

Of course, both of these approaches have limitations, and the two campaigns mentioned actually use a mixture of approaches. However, there's limited data that shows that one approach is better than the other, so what are campaigns to do? In her talk at the Personal Democracy Forum (video), danah boyd talked about candidates meeting their supporters on the digital receiving lines. She advocated that candidates should engage supporters where they reside, be it on blogs, SNS communities, or other places of online social interaction.

The upside of engaging supporters where they reside is simple - there are no switching costs. This is the primary problem with the candidate-centric model. How many websites do you visit daily? Asking someone to visit a new site is difficult enough - expecting them to come back even moreso. By meeting supporters where they reside, there are no switching costs; the challenge on the candidate's side becomes the management of the presence in various contexts.

Of course, this is not to say that candidates should eschew the creation of properties. Candidates will always have websites, and very popular candidates such as Obama can even field a well-used SNS. However, few candidates will share Obama's popularity, so the candidate-centric approach is often complimented by the audience-centric approach.

The approach Dodd takes with MyLifeBrand is a combination approach, and unfortunately it suffers from the downside of both. First, there are significant switching costs in asking the supporters to join "yet another" social network. Second, since this social network only serves to aggregate profiles (as opposed to the much more difficult challenge of making them interoperable), there's little utility gained from the centralized place. Dodd's team might as well simply follow the Edwards approach and create a page of links to the various profiles.

It strikes me that there's a real market for backend tools that make profile management for candidates less challenging. Tools that would enable push-button profile updates across social networks would be useful, though ultimately challenging to maintain. Ultimately, the right social technology strategy will require finesse and a deep understanding of the intended audience. However, by concentrating on meeting supporters where they are, keeping switching costs low, and deploying usable, sensible applications, candidates will be starting off on solid ground.

And the Winner Is..

2007-06-19T14:01:31-04:00

Just as soon as the Clinton campaign's theme song content appeared to be neverending, they've gone ahead and announced the winner. To promote the announcement, they've also created a great Sopranos finale spoof, which we're sharing here. With Hillary as Tony and Bill as Carmela, it's bound to get people talking.

Hc619-t

The Facebook Platform: Analysis

2007-05-25T11:53:34-04:00

[Eds note: Re-posted from Fred's blog Unit Structures. Although this post isn't directly about politics, the political applications of Facebook's new API are wide-open, as Alan Rosenblatt suggests.]

I’ve spent the morning reading the endless coverage of the recently-launched Facebook Platform. In case you can’t figure it out from the breathless tone of the coverage, this is big news; I commend the folks at Facebook for all of their hard work. Since it’s not particularly valuable for me to re-state things that have already been said (read here or here for a good treatment of the platform), I figured I’d just share my own take.

Let’s start simple - what is the Facebook platform? The platform is an extension of the Facebook API that allows third-parties to integrate applications within the profile. That is, the Facebook profile is now customizable. Among many other things, I can now add a list of adoptable dogs or cats to my profile (my favorite Facebook Platform app by far, thanks Dogster). The applications are “deeply integrated” into Facebook, meaning they have access to Facebook data. Unlike Myspace’s approach, where third-party applications sit above and apart from the platform, Facebook’s applications can reach into the platform and pull out data. This means you can know things like how many of your friends use an application, for example.

The setup process is simple; you select an application, agree to the terms of service, customize the application and then use the application. There are two outcomes - in one, the application is added to your profile. For example, you can add a list of adoptable pets to your profile. In the second outcome, you become a member of the application, but you don’t add it to your profile. You can still interact with the application, but it is less of an identity statement.

Understanding the differences between these two outcomes is important. In the first case, we can think of applications more as widgets; simple tools that enable individuals to make identity statements through their profiles. In the second case, we can think of Facebook as the gateway to rich applications, ones that leverage your data to provide a better experience. This is the “portal” example - where Facebook may become a portal to places like Ebay, Amazon or YouTube.

The play is simple; Facebook seeks to become a starting point for its users web experience. In essence, it is solving the “what’s next” problem by providing users a potentially endless set of experiences to encounter within the Facebook framework. Facebook knows that it has limited resources, by ceding some control of its space to third-parties, it retains users while enabling them to spend more time exploring the endless depths of the Facebook experience. In a sense, this is Second Life applied to Facebook; Second Life is only as interesting as the environments developed within - Facebook is no different.

Sounds like a great plan, right? I agree, it does sound good on paper. But how it shakes out in the real world is still left to be known. Facebook users engage with the service to have social needs answered; while Platform adds a bunch of new capability to the service, does it actually answer social needs? I think you could argue that the diversification of information presented on a profile is a relevant social need, but what about an Amazon marketplace? Is that a relevant social need? The ultimate question revolves around how these applications enable mutual disclosure between friends - how they help friends learn more about each other. That’s been the killer app of Facebook since day one, and just because the audience has changed somewhat I don’t believe it is no longer relevant.

The good news is that Platform is value-agnostic. There’s a lot of room for people to develop the applications that enable discovery about friends. And while that might not need to be the main goal of all applications, the applications that leverage discovery and revelation about friends will engage their audience in a different way than those who do not.

Ultimately, I think the Second Life metaphor is the one that sticks best to the Facebook Platform. Facebook has opened its doors in a way that Myspace has never dreamed of. In doing so, they’ve created a marketplace of ideas that will benefit the company and the community. They have realized that to create a thriving community, and ecosystem must be fostered. Facebook Platform is that ecosystem, well-positioning the company for its inevitable growth.

Update: Please see my notes and criticism of the Facebook Platform in this post.

Authenticity in Social Media

2007-05-22T17:40:11-04:00

In Mike Turk and Zack Exley's session at PDF 2007, a topic that came up frequently was the creation of perception with social media tools. The discussion explored methods for humanizing the candidate; dropping in on the comments of a blog post seemed a common and popular strategy. The outcome of this type of action is simple - it creates the perception that candidates are actively engaging with digital supporters. Of course, the problem is that this strategy isn't scalable or realistic; if we don't have enough time to read all of the blogs in our newsreader every day, one can only imagine how little time candidates have.

The connections fostered by social media are unique and context-specific. A blog comment is not the same as a Twitter or text message or Facebook share; all of these tools have their own rules and expectations. Perhaps this is why Barack Obama's first Twitter seemed so strange - his avatar seemed to not understand the complexities or expectations of the medium. Of course, once you understand the rules of the medium, it's not hard to create authentic persona for the candidates (though I'm still not sure about Obama's Twitters).

The greater question, however, revolves around the role of authenticity in social media. As candidates move to embrace social networks, online video , blogging and Twitter, will we hold them to the same standards we hold our friends? In these intensely personal mediums, will we eventually grow tired of the sculpted, managed persona? Will we want the candidate to actually be our friend, to drop the shtick, to let loose and get real a little?

Social media has provided presidential candidates a plethora of new methods to engage supporters. At the same time, it has created new expectations - that the candidate update her or his Facebook, that a video blog be posted, etc. As fas as I can see it, candidates have two options for meaningfully engaging audiences in the social media context. The first strategy, one that is currently employed by most candidates, involves the creation of profiles on various services that are managed by staffers. The staffer represents the candidate virtually as the candidate, creating a less-than-authentic identity for supporter interaction.

The second strategy is for candidates to embrace the reality that they can't actually manage their online identities, and for staffers to transparently represent the candidate online. Presidential campaigns are a huge collective effort, and as social media's role in the campaign expands, why not embrace the reality and be open, honest and transparent with supporters about the candidate's online identity.

Why does this matter? I'd argue that its all about the context. Social media is fundamentally different from email, for example, as it is opt-in messaging. I elect to receive John Edwards or Barack Obama's Twitters, and I can easily shut them off if I so desire. By allowing the candidates in, however, I expect them to operate like my other friends in the context - to not spam me, to post useful messages, to respect the privilege of communication. If they do not do so, they run the risk of spam-ifying social media. They run the risk of turning willing message recipients off, shutting off valuable communication channels.

And so what is the answer? Well, ultimately, presidential campaigns are always going to be ego driven. I'm always going to look for the Facebook profile of Hillary Clinton, not her campaign manager. However, these profiles should act as contact brokers - places where individuals can get in touch with (and receive messages from) staffers who are transparent about their identity and role in representing the candidate virtually. Don't worry - we get that the candidate doesn't have enough time to update his or her profiles. At the same time, let's not let that reality cloud its usefulness as a social media contact point.

On this blog we spend most of our time wondering about 2008, but it is clear beyond a doubt that social media will play significant roles in 2008, 2012, 2016 and so on. The candidates that use social media most effectively will set the precedent that will resound for years to come. I've got a feeling that the candidate that most authentically represents her or himself online will be this precedent-setter, and they'll benefit substantially as a result.