This just in from my friend Chris Cosart: the time of reckoning is at hand. I.e., the internet is turning its collective "genius" on Sarah Palin, meaning that she's transcended the merely mortal to become a meme. Sarah Palin Is Your New Segway is both inevitable (after Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle) and not entirely flattering in intent, seeing as it's inspired by a Daily Kos diary post (Segways didn't quite catch on, you see, and...).

The genius twist on the original is that the answers to the question "Sarah Palin is Your New..." are generated by readers right before your eyes -- hit "reload" and watch the results roll by. The first time I visited, the most recent were "Heartburn Inducer," "Discount LASIK," "Downtown Julie Brown," "Screen Door on a Submarine," and "Royal Crowne Cola." Obviously, lefties are going to have a lot of fun with this one. New view into the zeitgeist? Or just a great way to burn off a little more of that pesky cognitive surplus?

– cpd

Online Social Networks in Politics: Promise, Frustration and...

July 6, 2008

Is 2008 the MySpace/Facebook election? You might think so from the political attention and resources invested in online social networks in the past year or so. The top presidential campaigns all amassed much-chronicled lists of hundreds of thousands of "friends" on MySpace and Facebook, and the Obama and McCain campaigns also invested in custom social networks for supporters early on (MyBarackObama has built to hundreds of thousands of members, while McCain's equivalent never hit critical mass and died when his overall campaign first imploded in the middle of 2007).

But for all the prominence of online social networks, they haven't been as critical to this year's primaries as some had predicted: from the Reverend Wright to "Yes We Can" to "Bomb Bomb Iran," online video has almost certainly been more significant in shaping the race, at times even altering the fundamental direction of a campaign. As for direct supporter communications, candidates are still more likely to send email to donors and volunteers than to use social networking sites to reach them. Instead of social networking, the online technology that's really shaken up 2008 is fundraising: the candidates' ability to raise almost unlimited amounts of money online has been a true game-changer, allowing Barack Obama to opt out of public financing and to begin to build a significant Democratic financial advantage for the first time in political memory.

The Promise

Yet the data in the 2008 E-Voter Institute study show that online social networks SHOULD be fertile ground for political organizers: by just about any measure, users of websites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are more likely to be politically active than average citizens. For instance, they're more likely to donate to a candidate, more likely to join a political email list, more likely to visit a candidate's site, more likely to click on a candidate's ad -- in fact, they're more likely to mention even RECEIVING political email from a friend or family member, which suggests a high degree of back-and-forth interaction about politics in their online (and probably offline) lives.

Significantly, the trend toward relatively high levels of political interest and activity holds true beyond just the top social network enthusiasts: in most cases, average MySpace/Facebook users were closer in behavior to the power social networkers than they were to the non-networked population. For whatever reason, online social networks seem to attract a disproportionate number of politically active people. (Wild conjecture: I suspect that it has both to do with the relatively young age of social networking site users in a year in which the darn kids are politically active, as well as with the natural tendency of all social spaces to attract people who are in general directed outward into the public sphere.)

The Frustration

As plenty of activists in the nonprofit and political advocacy worlds have found, though, actually using online social networks for political outreach can be extremely time-consuming. The results in terms of supporters gained, funds raised or advocacy actions taken are at times astonishing, but in many other cases they're not -- they're often no more than comparable with those gained from email list-building and other forms of online outreach, and are frequently worse. A similar situation seems to exist on the electoral side: the presidential campaigns certainly use online social networking sites, but they drive most fundraising and local organizing via email and they capture most supporters directly through their own websites. [More detail on this assertion in the May, 2008, e.politics article "Has Facebook Jumped the Shark as a Political Tool?"]

Why the divide? If social networkers are so political active, why haven't Facebook and MySpace come to dominate the ways campaigns find, organize and mobilize supporters online? Once again, the E-Voter Survey suggests some reasons.

My Space, Indeed

To me, the critical data are in the responses to the first two questions: "Q1. How do you expect candidates to use the Internet?" and "Q2. What are the best ways for a candidate or advocate to get your attention for the 2008 election?" In both cases, those surveyed put social networking outreach near the bottom of the list overall: only 38% thought expected candidates to use online social networks, vs. 60% expecting online video and 70% online fundraising. As for getting voters' attention, only 36% of hard-core MySpace and Facebook enthusiasts listed social networking sites as a top way to reach them, comparable with direct mail and only a hair above newspaper and radio advertising!

Why? I suspect that one big reason lies in the very nature of online social networking: people have a sense that these sites aren't broadcast tools, that they are indeed actual social networks. Most members limit who can see details of their lives, and except for the obsessive "friend" collectors among us, most limit their networks largely to people they actually know.

In other words, MySpace may be too aptly named for its own financial good: each page is indeed "my space" to its owner and user, and many resist intrusions on their profiles, by ignoring commercial entreaties and overwhelming paid advertising with their own installed games, videos, music and custom layouts. Note that this "problem" -- to me it sounds like a healthy response -- doesn't just exist for political marketers, since if it were easy to find paying customers for commercial products on social networking sites, Facebook would have earned more than $150 million off of advertising to its umpteen million users last year.

Reaching the Networked

I suspect that the most effective solutions to reaching voters via MySpace and Facebook will end up being just as embedded in the fundamental nature of online social networks as the problems are, meaning that they'll use the sites' strengths by treating them as actual webs of connections rather than as broadcast tools. They'll derive their power from the fact that individual links between users generally do reflect real social relationships, and that we give communications from trusted sources disproportionate weight. As some in the online advocacy field have found, if real people do real outreach through real social connections, the results can be amazing -- but often at a great cost in time. As online organizer Ivan Boothe wrote recently about his work with the Genocide Intervention Network,

"We're not simply looking for a mailing list or an ATM -- we want an educated, active movement of people interested in preventing and stopping genocide. Our members need to be able to think for themselves on the issue -- to hold events in their communities, motivate others to take action, press their elected representatives to take [a] stand -- not to simply be another name on a list, but to be a hub in an ever-expanding network."

Which is pretty far from being a one-to-many mass-communications operation: we're talking about working closely (and frequently one-on-one) with people on Facebook and similar sites over a long period of time to help build a cadre of very committed activists, something that most electoral campaigns simply can't do, because of a lack of time, money, staff or all of the above.

That being said, whether or not campaigns have the resources for in-depth social networking outreach, it's becoming painfully easy to provide basic tools to followers that let them spread the word FOR you. Campaign profile pages are free, for starters, and more and more of the standard political-world web-hosting tools are providing options (from widgets to badges to petitions) that allow campaigns to encourage supporters to become evangelists on blogs, discussion groups -- AND social networking sites.

Citizen activism is something that we've seen an explosion of in this cycle, much of it welcomed by candidates ("Yes We Can"), some of it not ("FWD: barack hussein obama is a secret muslim intent on overthrowing the government from within"). Individual citizens' use of email, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and every other online tool imaginable to promote their causes and candidates has exploded, and campaigns will ignore the real potential of citizen activists (including your email-forwarding uncle -- see the results of E-Voter Survey Question 7) at their own peril. Most will find it better to try to harness the beast than to live entirely at its mercy.

Plus, more-traditional mass outreach may still work in online social settings, since extensive advertising on MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn is still relatively untested, and campaigns with the resources to buy ads targeted at their particular electoral districts may find them an effective way to tap a politically active audience. Once converted by whatever means, each site user is a potential advocate for a campaign in any communications channel he or she uses, online or off.

The Future

Some enthusiasts believe that within a few years we'll all be enveloped in a weave of online social networks from waking until dark, and in that case, online communications strategies will no doubt change (as will a lot of other things -- who else plans to go into hiding?). My suspicion is that social networking sites will continue to be a significant part of people's online lives, with most professionals at least having the equivalent of a LinkedIn or Facebook page, for instance. A much smaller number number of us will invest big chunks of our online selves on the equivalent of profile pages, but I suspect that this will still represent a sizeable and disproportionately political (and hence valuable) audience.

And as TV commercials and other mass-audience channels steadily lose effectiveness, campaigns may NEED the potential evangelists that social networking sites naturally draw in -- building an army of active and aggressive supporters may be the only way to cut through the endless clutter of media saturation and reach actual voters. But, that's a story for another day.

– cpd

Eight million list members. One million MyBarackObama members. Nearly two million Facebook/MySpace "friends." A couple of million online donors. By the time November comes around, those numbers will have grown — and Barack Obama is likely to be on his way to the White House. Assuming he wins, what will he do with his online following? Will Congress be next in his sights?

Candidates running for president usually promise big changes, but Congress always has the ultimate say. And as presidents from Jefferson to Bush have found, the leaders and members of the legislative branch have their own agendas, even if they nominally belong to the same party as the Chief Executive (lucky Washington pretty much got a free ride). Broadcast-era presidents discovered that the new media of their time could let them bypass congressmembers by speaking directly to their constituents/voters — think of Roosevelt's fireside chats or Reagan's press conferences. Obama will be the first true president of a different media age, the era of networked communications, so will he use the new online tools to shape his millions of supporters into a club to shift votes on Capitol Hill?

Advocacy groups by the thousands bombard Congress with emails and phone calls every year, but we've never had a president both with Obama's passionate personal following AND the effective means to mobilize them for instant political action. After an interminable primary season and what looks to be a fairly bitter fight in the Fall, they'll be primed for action — and besides the individual list members, tens of thousands of "super-volunteers" will be trained to organize people locally.

Imagine a Hill fight in the Fall of 2009, perhaps over global warming legislation. Despite years of work by individual senators, representatives and and advocacy groups, global warming bills have always stalled in the Congress, killed off by well organized interest groups, industry coalitions and congressmembers from districts seen as being harmed. After months of bickering, Obama unleashes his online followers. Members' Hill and district offices are deluged with calls (and visits) from constituents. Members' own phones ring with calls from sizable donors. Local TV news gets great footage as Obama supporters stage events outside district offices. Local newspapers are flooded with letters to the editor and Obama-supporting op-ed column submissions, while neighborhood activists walk the streets and rally door-to-door. Would enough members bend from the pressure that Obama gets his way?

Of course, a president could only use a club this blunt so many times, but we could also imagine a more surgical operation, with super-volunteers and other trusted spokespeople speaking to the media and visiting district offices, and large Obama donors and organizers in a district making discreet phone calls. What should give Obama's network particular strength is that congressmembers KNOW that his people donate and that they vote — and if they're angry enough, they could yield a primary challenger even in a safe Democratic district. That's the ultimate threat behind Obama's list — that it could be used against an incumbent during an election, not just a Hill vote.

The unintended consequences of an Obama advocacy blitz could be interesting in themselves, since once people get riled up, what's to stop them from staying on the case even when they're asked to back off? What if local activists get motivated enough to start working against incumbents whom Obama supports? Plenty of demagogues have raised a mob in the past that they ultimately couldn't control, and since Obama's supporters already have noteworthy cult-like qualities as it is (the Daily Show's walking-on-water jokes about his Holy Land trip were funny-'cause-they-were-true funny), who knows what will splinter off? I'd be shocked if the Obama army marched too far off the reservation, though, since I suspect he's more likely to face the problem of dealing with disappointment, the kind that sets in when his True Believers realize the kind of compromises that any politician has to make if he wants to get something done.

Whether Obama uses his list to cudgel Congress or not, somebody will — plenty of politicos (and radio hosts and bloggers and Tila Tequila) are building up their own independent networks of supporters. At some point, a president WILL use new media to bypass his opponents by speaking directly to his followers among their constituents. The only question is whether or not it will work.

– cpd

Here's a clever idea -- install a web browser toolbar sponsored by the Republican National Committee and you can raise money for the RNC "through normal online activities such as searching and shopping." It seems to be a variant of the Yahoo toolbar, so presumably it's some kind of ad revenue-sharing deal with kickback from selected online retailers as well. And of course it contains a communications function, placing an RNC brand and magic "donate" button right on your desktop as well as opening up a new channel for direct messages from the Republican overlords.

Somebody install it and let me know how it works -- sorry guys, but I ain't raisin' a dime for the RNC, even in the interest of science. Update: a couple of folks have written in to point out that the toolbar they're using is from FreeCause and that other organizations are able to use it. You can get more details on the application from FreeCause. Note: at least this time it's not a pink elephant.

– cpd

On the first day of Netroots Nation, Chris Hughes and friend-of-e.politics (and new Obama campaign employee) Judith Freeman led an overview of how the nominee-to-be's campaign has used social networking tools of all kinds to bring in new supporters, organize locally and (most importantly) put volunteers to work on their own. Let's break down the tools and how the campaign uses each.

MyBarackObama

MyBarackObama is a "walled garden" social network, meaning that it's a campaign-specific site and not a public social network like MySpace or Facebook. Whether it's an actual social network with cross-connections among users has been questioned, but it and its million+ members are clearly extremely useful to the campaign. The critical point is that the MyBO features give participating activists tools to organize in their own communities, for instance by throwing house parties and fundraising drives, BEFORE the campaign has begun to direct volunteer activities from above.

For instance, based on Chris and Judith's presentation, it sounds as though MyBarackObama is most important in the period before the campaign has a chance to set up an official organization in an area, since it gives people an immediate outlet for their political enthusiasm. And when official campaign staff do create a presence in the area, MyBO provides them with an automatic pool of local helpers and a pool of data about online activity, making it easy to identify the all-important super-volunteers. Once the campaign is up and running in a given area, the professional staff will begin to direct more of the local volunteer activity, but even then MyBO usage does not appear to drop off significantly.

Organizing on Facebook

Of course, as we've covered many times before, relatively few political organizations will be able to set up a system like MyBarackObama, in part because of the difficulty of hitting critical mass and in part because of cost, so the Obama campaign's outreach tactics for mass audience online social networks (Facebook, MySpace) are more likely to be useful as a model. Obama's Facebook outreach breaks down into three elements:

• Profile page. The best known part of Obama's Facebook outreach, his Page currently has 1.15 million "friends," three times as many as any other Page (political or not). Critically, having a Page allows the campaign to mass-message its supporters, providing an email supplement/replacement whose messages are guaranteed to get through. And of course it's a convenient catch-point, creating that initial supporter contact that the campaign can then leverage to encourage deeper levels of activism.
• Local groups. All through the primary election process, Obama field organizers were told to create LOCAL Facebook groups, which can actually grow very quickly from a small nucleus — Facebook Newsfeeds automatically promote the signup process, since your friends' feeds are updated when you join a group. And again a local Facebook group is another email supplement/replacement for one-to-one or one-to-many organizing messages.
• Facebook Application The Obama Facebook App spreads campaign messages directly to supporters' friends as they visit the supporter's profile, greatly increasing distribution — like a badge or a button, but with constantly updated messaging from the campaign. So far, hundreds of thousands of people have installed the Obama App, and I'd be fascinated to know how many conversions have come directly from people seeing it on their friends' sites.

MySpace

As anyone who's used the two sites knows, MySpace pages allow much more customization than Facebook profiles, meaning that MySpace offers great flexibility to a political campaign. For instance, on MySpace it's much easier to add obvious and easy email signup forms to ensnare supporters and to provide clear links back to important features on the main Obama campaign site.

It's also relatively easy for individual MySpace users to add different features to their own profiles, and the Obama campaign has created a slew of buttons, badges and widgets to help them spread the word. Ultimately the campaign is trying to use each MySpace supporter's profile page as a communications hub in that supporter's own social circle, ginning up volunteers friend-to-friend.

The Obama campaign has also been active on other soc nets such as Black Planet, and in each case they adapt their approach to meet the particular rules, requirements and customs of that site. But despite impressive fundraising, the campaign's resources are limited, and it would be difficult to have a robust presence in every place they would like.

Lessons

Though it's good to see how a well-funded and well-organized campaign approaches online social networks, most political organizations won't have to resources to do in-depth outreach and build a devoted cadre of super-activists — much less cultivate their own walled gardens. But as we've discussed before, providing supporters with the tools to promote a candidate or cause on their own is relatively simple — profile pages, badges, buttons and even widgets are easy to build (believe me, if e.politics can have a widget, anyone can). In other words, campaigns don't have to dive right into the deep end — sometimes a dipping a toe or two into the pool of Facebook and MySpace fans will be enough.

– cpd

The primaries are dead; long live the primaries! Before we plunge into the inevitable frenzy of the Fall campaign season, let's take a few minutes to draw some conclusions about the world of online politics from the candidates' experiences in the race so far.

1. We're in a social media world, whether you like it or not.

Before we crown Barack Obama the King of internet Politics, let's ask him how he feels about all those Reverend Wright YouTube clips scattered at the base of his throne. Sure, the Democratic nominee-to-be benefited from the 'net in significant and almost certainly decisive ways, but he also got kicked around plenty online. Just about every candidate suffered similarly, from the anti-Hillary "1984" ad and the John Edwards haircut video to that great footage of Rudy Giuliani in a dress. By feeding true believers a steady diet of similar red meat, blogs and online discussion sites helped to spread these and other less-than-flattering tidbits far and wide, with the most "successful" ending up in endless rotation on cable news. Of course, for every "1984" video, someone created a "Yes We Can" — the double-edged sword of social media.

The message is that candidates don't control the discussion and neither do traditional media gatekeepers — both are competing with an army of amateurs. And with tens of millions of monkeys banging away on keyboards, it doesn't take long for some true gems to float to the surface of the resulting sea of schlock. The trick for campaigns is to make it as easy as possible for online supporters to make a candidate or cause's case in whatever online (and real-world) channels they use, while realizing that there's always a chance that a candidate can be blindsided by a citizen creation (or inopportune supporter comment) and thrown off-message for days.

2. Video may be killer, but behind-the-scenes email is poison.

At least, if you're Barack Obama and if that email is accusing you of being a muslim manchurian candidate. Video may have emerged as a powerfully persuasive online communications channel (not surprising considering the effectiveness of television), but don't overlook the staying power of certain first-generation online tools, namely email. Email has helped candidates engage supporters and raise tons of money, and it's been absolutely key in the process of mobilizing volunteers and voters. But it's also sometimes been a river filled with boatloads of lies and distortion. Fighting the viral emails and the whisper campaigns has taken more time and resources than Obama would like, and it's still unclear how many votes they'll sway in the end.

3. Guess what: the internet can be a massive cash machine.

If there's one thing that political professionals have paid attention to in 2008, it's online fundraising. Money is a language these guys know how to speak, and when you start raising $60 million in a month, they start to notice. The really critical factor is how replicable online fundraising success seems to be. I.e., it's not just Obama, since Hillary Clinton also raised sizable amounts online this season, as did Ron Paul. And once he sealed the Republican nomination, even John McCain started bringing in sums that in any other year would be more than respectable. Easy fundraising sites like ActBlue and Slatecard promise to extend online donations to candidates up and down the ladder, a phenomenon already common in the world of online advocacy — nonprofits of all sizes maintain email lists and social networking presences in order to raise money online.

4. Speaking of, online social networks are potent tools, but "walled gardens" are a more risky proposition.

Facebook and MySpace have been critical tools this political season, particularly for campus and other local organizers and as an email replacement. Interestingly, social media sites so far don't seem to have been as effective as mass communications tools as some predicted — they generally seem to work best one-to-one or one-to-a-few. Once again, the onus is on campaigns to arm their supporters with the tools they need to persuade and motivate in the public social networking space, though campaigns can also create their own networks, so-called "walled garden" social sites.

Some analyses have pointed to the MyBarackObama feature as playing a role in Obama's success, and it's certainly true that hundreds of thousands of his supporters have created profiles in his campaign-centered network. I'd be curious to see how much more likely MyBarackObama members were to donate or to volunteer, particularly compared to email list members, numbers that should creep out eventually. But don't forget that this season we've also seen evidence that custom social networks aren't guaranteed to succeed: witness the quick implosion of John McCain's original edition early in 2007 (critical mass is critical indeed!).

5. In any case, how you keep in touch is less important than THAT you keep in touch.

Email vs. social networks as an organizing tool? Who cares! Use whatever works in a given situation — just stay in touch. Email, Facebook, MySpace, RSS widgets, Twitter, blogs, text messages and YouTube all have their places, along with plenty of others I can't remember right now. What matters is that campaigns and organizations actively stay in touch with their supporters to build relationships over time.

Once you're communicating, the next mission is to get people motivated to act, either in the real world or online. As of now, Obama-style integrated communications/volunteer-management is relatively rare, but some CRM (customer/constituent/contact-relations management) systems are beginning to incorporate multiple-channel features, and these should become increasingly common over the next election cycle or two.

6. As for the results, can you say, cult of personali-tay?

Okay, bad joke but serious idea. One thing that's absolutely fascinated me over the past year or so has been the internet's role in the growth of standalone political followings. From Ron Paul to MoveOn to DailyKos, certain people and certain groups are using the 'net to draw supporters together and keep them mobilized and active, often long after the campaign they originally joined to help is over. These movements have broadcast-world counterparts — Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart, Lou Dobbs — but the 'net allows both consumers both action AND absorption, since a follower can DO something to help MoveOn or their candidate of choice rather than just listen and watch. Interaction builds loyalty — and staying power.

Still, most online followings will fade over time, just as any email activist list gradually dies off without an influx of new activists, but some (like MoveOn) will settle into being semi-permanent parts of the landscape. For an example of the longer-term effects, let's say that Obama wins the presidency and serves a term or two. After that, will his personal fan base (maintained and solidified online) lend him a disproportionate voice in the politics of the following decades? "Like Mussolini, and Kennedy/I'm the cult of personality."

What's really fun is when one online cult leader runs head-on into another, as when Obama went around the top-level bloggers to pick off their readers directly this season. Disintermediating the would-be disintermediators!

7. The final lesson: the internet CAN really matter, but it doesn't ALWAYS really matter — yet.

I agree with Mike Cornfield and Sarah Lai Stirland that without the internet, it's very unlikely Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee. But it's also true that without the internet, John McCain almost certainly would be the Republican nominee — if the internet so overpowered other political considerations, Ron Paul ought to be standing in his place. The 'net IS key to modern politics, if only because it's so often the primary way of moving news and opinion these days. But it still isn't the ONLY key, and it may never be — at least, not until we all have wifi chips implanted in our brains and join the hive-mind. Which at this rate should be just in time for the 2020 primary season...scheduled to begin early in 2016.

– cpd

• Download Online Politics 101

At the exact instant I opened this email from him, Jim Webb came on the radio, leaving only one obvious question: is a two-fer good enough for "BINGO" in the veepstakes stature game?

On NPR Friday, the Junior Senator from Virginia deflected talk about the Vice Presidency by shifting discussion to the good he could do on the serious issues of the day if he stays where he is. In the process, he compared his preferred style of public service to that of the late J. Patrick Moynihan. The eerily concurrent email message, the first from the Born Fighting Political Action Committee in almost two months, provides a handy cheat sheet to Senator Webb's Completely Inadvertent Weekend o' Media Exposure:

Over the next several days, Senator Jim Webb will appear on a number of TV and radio programs discussing the critical issues facing our nation.

Sunday, May 18: Meet the Press (NBC)

Monday, May 19: CBS Early Morning

Monday, May 19: Fresh Air (NPR)

Monday, May 19: Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)

Tuesday, May 20: Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC)

Tuesday, May 20: Lou Dobbs (CNN)

Check your local listings for the airtime and station broadcasting each show. We hope you can tune in. Thank you for your continued support of Born Fighting PAC.

Oh no, he's just a politically and intellectually ambitious border-state politician and author with a military background, a dollop of good-ole-boy cred and a son who's served in Iraq. Why would he possibly want to draw attention to himself in May of 2008? Update! Wait: Could it be that he's circled a certain very special personal ad?

"ISO rough-hewn MWM/MWF for ticket-sharing and mutual-career-boosting. You: able to offset my key weakness among Southern white voters while also providing welcome government and/or policy experience. Bipartisan bonus points for past service in a Republican administration. Me: serious, reliable, charismatic Midwestern type with a sparkle in my eye, an excellent sense of timing and a mean jump shot. Reply to #3464 to leave a message for Barry."

Can't wait to hear more from these star-crossed lovers!

– cpd

Has the Internet come of age for political campaigns? Which voters are best motivated using web tools? Are online social networks effective for getting out the vote? Take the 7th Annual Survey of Political and Advocacy Communications Leaders and help E-Voter Institute better understand how campaign dollars are being spent. Take the survey and provide a wider view of the effectiveness of all media used by candidates and advocates.

E-Voter Institute, along with HCD Research, is also conducting the 3rd Annual Survey of Voter Expectations. All research results will be available in mid-July with an eye to helping you make more informed decisions about general election 2008 clients. Watch for notices about the webinar this summer. Go to http://e-voterinstitute.com to download reports from 2006 and 2007.

Remember, the more of us reply by the time the survey wraps up on May 31, the more likely we are to get good results.

– cpd

Interesting new GOP anti-Obama site, via the The Caucus: CanWeAsk.com mixes social media techniques and video to try to undermine Obama's credibility. The social media approach is the most interesting part of the site, since it's soliciting text and video questions for the now-presumed nominee (The Caucus correctly notes that the very existence of the site helps to cement the impression that Obama has crossed the finish line). Participants can upload text questions directly to the site, but the video submission process requests YouTube links instead (free product placement!). The site also has a Donate link and a list of unfavorable GOP news articles about Obama.

To me, the video is the weakest part of the presentation, since it shows Barack in still images that are surely intended to paint him in a bad light, but except for the first one (in which his furrowed brow almost suggests devil horns), to me they actually generally make him look serious and sincere (he's on-screen throughout the whole clip). The video also uses standard negative-ad "concerned" music, and tries to turn an Obama crowd's "Yes We Can" chant into an affirmation of our right to ask the candidate tough questions, but in the end it actually just reminds me of the guy's own message. I have to say, this clip feels like a backfire-in-progress. See what you think:

Update: While I was editing this piece, I let the video run in the background, where I could hear it but not see it, and it felt more effective that way. Still, every time the chant of "Yes We Can" came along, it still seemed to undermine the overall feeling of negativity. Maybe it's just me.

– cpd

As the Democratic primary process grinds on, the candidates' supporters are using just about every electronic tool available to swing the race their way. Two cases in point from the Obama side: super.del.egates.us is a wiki-based contact list for voters to use to reach those precious unpledged delegates to the Democratic Convention, while Yrmomma4obama aims to help young voters (and those too young to vote themselves) to use text messages to persuade their friends and family to jump on the Obama bandwagon.

Super.del.egates.us is based on a classic wiki structure, familiar to anyone who's spent time on Wikipedia.org. It collects the contact information for the Democratic superdelegates, including web forms for those congressmembers who don't accept direct emails, with details being entered by volunteers. The site launched last week, and as of this writing it's only partially filled out, but it's a fascinating example of the new kinds of citizen activism the 'net is enabling this year. As with any online effort that requires a critical mass of participants to work, Super.del.egates.us will live and die by promotion — if no one hears about it, it's not likely to do much good.

By contrast, Yrmomma4obama has been around for a couple of months and works as a standalone application. The intended audience is young, so the site has features for both voters and those still unable to cast a ballot. Its core function: the site lets you send a message to your cell phone, which you can then forward to friends and family. Of course, you can also sign up for text alerts for upcoming primaries, and the organizers have also created a Facebook group. A site like this doesn't require the same critical mass to be effective as the wiki above, so it may be useful no matter how many voters it reaches. Online enabling of offline behavior, anyone?

– cpd

Update from the Politics Online Conference: some quick numbers from Patrick Quinn of PQMedia on how candidates are expected to spend their money online in 2008. First, online spending should total roughly $73 million at all levels in the '08 elections. Second, email marketing is still dominates expenditures, taking up 62% of campaigns' online spending. Web development is next on the list at 27%, with display, search and video ads taking up the remaining 11% of online budgets. For comparison, the 2004 numbers were 74% for email, 19% for web development and 7% for ads.

Quinn attributed the increase in development spending to the growth in both online fundraising and the number of local candidate sites. Email's relative decline (though don't forget that it's still by far the largest piece of the pie) is due in part to a greater emphasis on backend technology for fundraising as well as to email's slow, steady decline as a mass communications tool in the face of deliverability issues. Online advertising suffers, he said, because political communications professionals don't yet see it as a local medium (they clearly haven't fully appreciated the power of geotargeting). Quinn also pointed out that while these numbers are projections, reality has matched PQMedia's predictions through the election cycle to this date.

Also at the panel, Kate Kaye from ClickZ looked specifically at online display (banner) ad buys in the campaign so far: McCain and Romney together have bought roughly 70% of presidential display ads, with the Obama campaign taking up all but a small fraction of the remainder. With that in mind, she raised the question of whether or not an Obama/McCain race in particular could lead to a jump in online ad spending.

As National Journal's Alex Treadway pointed out earlier in the day, though, political professionals will be reluctant to embrace online ads as a tool until the online advertising world finds ways to make it easier for consultants to place ads, particularly when they're dealing with many different sites. I wonder how much the 15% cut of TV ad buys that media consultants often take affects their thinking? A year ago I heard Michael Cornfield make a similar observation, saying that consultants will resist shifting spending to online marketing until they can figure out a business model that lets them make money off of it. For reference, Michael Bassik noted at today's panel that commercial marketers spend closer to 10% of their marketing money online — vastly more than their political counterparts.

– cpd