We’re not just the Internet. We’re flesh and blood.
Could this serve as the motto of the 2008 campaign? The election when online social networks proved that they exist, by out-fundraising traditional party elites, by helping create surging turnout by consituencies long dismissed by party insiders, and by spawning effective grassroots organizing across the country on an unprecendented scale.
]]>Last weekend, tourists in Las Vegas were greeted by the sight of Ron Paul supporters parading down the Strip, chanting:
We’re not just the Internet. We’re flesh and blood.
Could this serve as the motto of the 2008 campaign? The election when online social networks proved that they exist, by out-fundraising traditional party elites, by helping create surging turnout by consituencies long dismissed by party insiders, and by spawning effective grassroots organizing across the country on an unprecendented scale.
It was only November when the highest-paid pollster in the Democratic party, Mark Penn, summed up conventional wisdom by claiming that Obama supporters "look like Facebook" and not "like caucus-goers."
On caucus night, in part through creating a network of well over a hundred high school and over thirty university chapters online and on Facebook, allowing people to pledge to caucus, to contact their peers, to take on leadership roles at their school, and to sign up to volunteer, the Obama campaign won the youth vote by 45 percentage points, in a year in which young voters made up 22% of the electorate.
Ron Paul's supporters, marching through downtown Las Vegas, aren't likely to win on Saturday, nor are they likely to enter the American mainstream, but they've already also proven their point.
Besides employing the largest staff in Nevada, Paul has transcended his early Internet-only stardom: The staunch libertarian appears to have the most eclectic and fervent followers in Nevada of all the Republican candidates.
They said they were happy to get out from behind their computers to march on Saturday. [...] From there, supporters moved to a far-too-large ballroom at the Texas Station casino for a celebration of their hero with music techno-inspired and country-flavored.
For many, it was the first time they were in a room with like-minded Americans...
Make a note: This scene will be repeated.
The lessons that young people and libertarians take away from this election will apply to the general electorate in future elections.
]]>The message: Our supporters "look like caucus-goers," their supporters "look like Facebook."
]]>A mere week after launching Students for Hillary and touting its support among young people, top advisers to Hillary Clinton were busy in the spin room Saturday night disparaging them, claiming that Obama's supporters were young and unlikely to caucus.
Good strategy: A week after finally setting up your campaign's organization to attract young people, tell them they won't vote anyway so their presence is irrelevant.
You can either dispute the idea that Obama has broad support among young people, or you can reinforce and disparage it, but either way you might want to make up your mind first before opening your mouth:
At least two of Hillary Clinton’s upper-echelon advisers, Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, were decidedly unimpressed.
“Our people look like caucus-goers,” Grunwald said, “and his people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook.”
Penn added, “Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state.”
I have to say that I find these comments shocking, and I would expect better of any campaign that hoped to end up with our party's nomination.
First of all, people who are 18 ARE caucus-goers and, yes, young people do vote.
In 2004, young voters made up somewhere around 1/5 of the primary electorate in the early states. In Iowa, youth turnout in the caucuses quadrupled (pdf) in 2004, and 18-29 year olds constituted a larger share of the electorate [17%] than 30-44 year olds.
In New Hampshire, young voters also increased their primary turnout (at pace with the rest of the electorate). In three of the first primary states, youth participation in the general election increased substantially in 2004 and in 2006.
Second, let me get this straight, young voters turning out to commute to Des Moines to attend a five-hour long party convention on a Saturday night is evidence that these young people will not turn out to caucus? You want to run that by me again?
Third, let's leave aside that the Clinton campaign is basically on the record planning on a low youth turnout, which obviously leads one to doubt the sincerity or optimism of their efforts to do otherwise ––– a serious mistake, especially for a general election nominee.
Mark Penn's "They look like Facebook" deserves to be one of the more ridiculed strategic assertions of this campaign. Not the way a party sets about winning the youth vote, and not inspiring rhetoric for those hoping campaigns will realize the power of online social networking.
Lastly, Penn's hyperbolic claim that "only a few" were of legal age to vote runs up against the observations of journalists at the event, who noted a younger but certainly diverse crowd, as well as photos of the crowd.
Cross-posted on One Million Strong
]]>Earlier this week in Washington, Facebook hosted two consecutive workshops that it dubbed the Facebook Political Summit. "Our goal is to make you win," announced Josh Rahn, director of sales, before laying out the numbers, as reported by J.P. Freire of the NY Times, "[O]f 45 million active users, 80 percent are of voting age. These users spend an average of 22 minutes on the site a day, more than enough time to hear the campaign's pitch." And Facebook is changing. College students who used to be Facebook's exclusive audience now "account for a third to half of its membership."
Facebook to Alter Limits on Group Messaging
Shortly after the launch of the official Obama campaign website on February 10th, Tamer Abouzeid, a student in Chicago, used the personal fundraising feature to create a group fundraising page for the Facebook group One Million Strong for Barack. He then posted a discussion thread.
The response was immediate --- by February 27th, two weeks later, the Facebook group had raised $10,000 with an average donation of about $30. By the end of the fundraising quarter, we had raised $15,000, but it had begun to taper off.
Despite having a huge membership, we had no way of contacting them, and we had begun to hit up the active membership that posted in the discussion threads multiple times. Facebook controls had effectively nipped the effort in the bud.
Obama supporters on Facebook, despite Obama's early dominance there, have struggled to organize. Admins of Facebook groups are able to message their entire membership with a click --- until the group reaches a thousand members. One of my first posts on MyDD back in May complained somewhat bitterly about this.
Organizing groups of volunteers to manually send out messages to the membership list only resulted in several being abruptly suspended or banned by the anti-spam controls. We even formed an Obama admin collaboration group, with the goal of being able to mass-message the admins of Obama groups with less than a thousand members (of which there are hundreds on Facebook) who could then mass-message their memberships.
At the same time that Facebook was receiving mountains of free press for being on the cutting edge of campaigning amid countless articles about the growth of One Million Strong for Barack, Facebook policy was effectively smothering the group's ability to do much at all.
On May 8th, Ezra Callahan of Facebook responded in a comment to the wall of a meta-Facebook group protesting the message limit:
1. Technical limitations - Sending messages at that volume causes technical problems. We're looking into that, but it's not an easy issue.2. Spam concerns - I disagree with the sentiment that users join groups knowing they're going to get messaged. Especially since the 1,000-member cap has been in place for so long, I think most users assume they won't get bothered by any large silly groups they join (e.g. "The Largest Group on Facebook", etc.). Sure, users can leave/join groups at their own discretion, but I think people would be really unhappy if they started getting spammed by large groups or felt like they couldn't join such groups in the first place.
That said, obviously there is a lot of utility in being able to message a large set of people for legitimate groups and causes like the one you describe. So we're actively looking into this issue to see if we can find the right balance here.
Months continued to pass. Hooman Hedayati reported receiving wild applause after posing the question to a Facebook representative and panelist at the Campus Progress Conference at the end of June.
Yesterday at the Facebook workshop, Callahan announced:
acknowledged a forthcoming "fundamental shift" in policies that will soon render the 1,000-supporter cut-off a thing of the past -- and not just for political candidates, but for other groups, as well. Changes should take place before January."
Such a change might be too late to have an impact in this presidential election. The real story of what young people might have accomplished this cycle on Facebook has already been smothered.
Pro-Growth vs. Pro-Efficacy of Facebook groups
One Million Strong for Barack also faced another problem. After experiencing a surge of growth, its admins wanted to expand the scope and impact of the group. They wanted to encourage members to volunteer, to donate, to spread materials about the campaign. Whereas before the group site had been a simple set of goals and deadlines for growing the number of members, the goals were taken down and replaced with calls to action.
Growth, which had already slowed, began to stall, and then membership began to plummet. From a peak of around 350,000 members, the group fell back toward 300,000. I suspect that Facebook groups the size of One Million Strong for Barack experience a great deal more turnover than one would expect and that without new growth they begin to decline.
When the growth goals were restored to the homepage a month ago (and the school year began again), the group climbed back to 370,000 and has resumed growing --- albeit slowly. Concentrating the website on getting new members to hit the invite button has been successful, but frustratingly it has seemed to be an either/or proposition with organizing.
One Million Strong Against Hillary Clinton -- a cynical effort from a New Hampshire Republican party operative that sees bipartisanship in shared and unquestioning contempt, posted an unflattering glaring photo of Clinton in an artificial, greenish alien-glow, and has no ambitions whatsoever for organizing -- has focused exclusively on growth. They copied both Farouk's name and his method, posting milestones and deadlines:
Milestones
===100 Members- February 20th GOAL MET 2/19
1,000 Members- March 20th GOAL MET 2/20
10,000 Members- April 15th GOAL MET 2/28
50,000 Members- May 8th GOAL MET 3/15
100,000 Members- May 22nd GOAL MET 3/26
250,000 Members- June 5th GOAL MET 5/7
500,000 Members- January 8th, 2008
1,000,000 Members- November, 2008
The group does not even have a discussion board, let alone a wall --- it clearly has no actual desire to engage with the community other than to feed its own growth.
It raises an interesting question though that doesn't seem to have been posed recently. How can these large Facebook groups both be effective organizing tools and continue to grow? (I have a few ideas about this that I've been working with Farouk and Lindsey on. Hopefully we'll have something to announce soon.)
Republicans Apparently Didn't Show Up
TechPresident reported on the audience of the Facebook workshop:
Attendees included representatives from advocacy groups, the DNC, the DCCC, and some Democratic Congressional offices. According to Freire, "Very few Republicans were present, aside from a lone Ron Paul campaign staff member and members of the Young Republican National Federation."
Lastly, a Cool New Voter Facebook Registration Application
I also wanted to write today about a great new Facebook application called 2008 U.S. Voter Registration. The application asks a couple of brief questions: your state of residence and if you're registered to vote already. It then allows you to register.
If you've already registered, you can make a pledge to promise to vote, invite friends to register, and sign up to receive an email reminder to cast your ballot on a date of your choosing anytime in October or November 2008 up to Election Day.
If you make the pledge, it is announced on your Newsfeed with a link inviting others to join in.
The application is still very basic and remains focused on the general election, but the creator has indicated he would add the primaries if there is sufficient interest.
Thus far, 33 people have registered to vote through the application, and an additional 90 has pledged to register. It has generated that much attention yet, so far as I know, but it seems very functional and has all the elements that I hoped for in a June 7th post about the Obama Facebook application.
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