As the Washington Post reported, this past weekend visitors to Rudy Giuliani's campaign website (www.joinrudy2008.com) came face-to-face with a placeholder which read, "Happy Labor Day Weekend! JoinRudy2008.com is down temporarily and will be live again soon with an improved look." Why the re-launch? Getting lapped by Fred because of a primitive platform was probably a significant boost to the argument constantly being made by the online team.
The bad news for Rudy was that placeholder was the only thing on the site. Not even an email capture or a link to a donate page made the static page. Energy lost. The decision had been made to yank the site before the new one had finished cooking and the Post nailed them for it.
The good news for Rudy is that Labor Day weekend is over and the modern site is up-and-running. Let's have a look under the hood and see what we can find...
OVERALL
I'm not jumping up-and-down with excitement and calling this a model for success in the modern world, but the new site is a step in the right direction. But perhaps more importantly then what is happening on his site, Rudy now has a real and honest presence off his site (where we all spend most of our time). In fact, he's finally hanging out with us in both facebook and myspace, and their YouTube channel has some interesting content thanks to a young, campaign operative named Dan Meyers who is hosting a series called, "Running with Rudy." (Note: Meyers also visibly maintains the presence in the socnets.)
In other words, their online strategy appears to be transforming in to one that is modern, effective, and relevant on the 2008 campaign trail.
WEBSITE
I might just be getting used to seeing these things, but like most campaign websites, nothing special stands out at me as remarkable or will keep me personally coming back for more. It's fine. He's capturing emails, he's got a "blog" that isn't really a blog, and he's funneling people quickly in to the area they want to be in. They're doing what needs to be done - finally.
My eyes were quickly drawn to the socnet section because the all too familiar flickr logo popped off the page. And then I noticed their National House Party Night icon which will feature a live webcast with Rudy on September 26 (good placement for exposure).
OFF-SITE
Of course, what I'm most concerned about isn't what's on the site, but what they're doing in the real, modern world. After all, I'll likely never personally go back to his site, but I've got loads of "friends" that love the guy so it'll be interesting to see how Rudy can motivate his network of supporters to promote him among their network of friends. I like the idea of having one personality, Dan Meyers, "be" Rudy Giuliani in socnets. Back in 2006 I used the moniker "spokesblogger" because I was a spokesman for Republicans in the blogosphere. I think Dan is similarly emerging as the first in a new role for online political operatives. And, of course, I would be remiss not to note in this space that Rudy's myspace privacy setting is finally turned off.
CONCLUSION
Back in July I offered five tips to Rudy to get his online game running strong. If all five of those haven't already been addressed, they're well on their way to doing so (before it's too late). A dollop of porridge to Katie Harbath and the rest of Team Giuliani.
Welcome to the modern world. We've been saving a seat for you.
Can you give me the above mentioned folks email addresses please? I have some information about The Arena USA .com that I need to share w/them. Thank you for the information your article provided!
Rebecca Martinez
Rebecca@thearena2008.com
(323) 860-8282
Without getting too much into the weeds on this, I think it's erroneous to say that your web site doesn't matter as much, and you should be judged primarily on your social networking presence.
This is a great step in the right direction for the Rudy folks as far as their social media presence goes. They're the first politician profile I've seen to make an effective use of Facebook applications, for starters.
But it's clear that websites still matter. Rudy got a lot of heat for not being on Facebook/MySpace. A lot of that criticism will now vanish because they've resolved that criticism, and the critics, not being as schooled in the intricacies of main presence websites (think of how much time YOU spend on political sites vs. Facebook/MySpace), will basically ignore what's on his main site. That does a disservice -- in that you don't get rewarded for doing good stuff on your site and you don't get punished for bass-ackwards decisions.
Maybe I'm naive, but I thought that by this point the primary campaign websites would be where BC04/Kerry were in the general. The technology is so much better, and neither side is using it. Pull up DeanforAmerica.com in the Wayback Machine -- and you'll see there was way more cool functionality on there than there is on any of the primary campaign sites including Obama (or Paul!). And remember... I'm talking about the technology, not the crazy candidate.
2004 was a huge leap forward from 2000. The Dean campaign, and then the Bush neighbor-to-neighbor tools that you, Chuck DeFeo, and I worked on were light years ahead of anything on the market at the time. Has anyone done anything even remotely like that this time, instead of just figuring out cleverer ways of getting people to fill out forms and outsourcing the rest to MySpace/Facebook/YouTube? Will anyone even do remote GOTV to Iowa and New Hampshire (McCain 2000 did this!)? I can just see the Political Departments right now rushing to veto anything like this because of the taint of Dean's orange hats.
Maybe we're not giving the Giuliani camp enough credit. If what BigHeadDC says is right ( http://bigheaddc.com/2007/09/05/abrad2345-watch-your-back/ )) then maybe the Giuliani web presence is intentionally lame, thus allowing them to put their efforts to something really viral and interesting. Not sure I buy it, but how much are BrabenderCox and pals charging Rudy for a two minute shot of a kid in a button-down blue shirt? There's got to be more going on. Right???
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Could not disagree more
In the interest of full disclosure, I am still advising the Thompson team on their use of the Internet. However, I offer this comment not in that role, but as the guy who reviewed Rudy's site for TechPresident back in March.
My feelings for the Rudy site haven't changed at all - mainly because the site itself has changed so very little. You can repackage old fish in new plastic wrap, but it doesn't make the stink go away.
While the site layout is different, it's all the same weak functionality. They renamed "The Buzz" as "the blog" but it's still little more than less formal press releases and Digg aggregation.
I give them credit for making their MySpace page public. It was kind of odd to have it set as private to begin with. However, creating a social networking page does not begin to address their problems with the web site, which remain considerable even with the new layer of plastic. You're somehow justifying a pass on the weak site simply because they chose to open up a second front in the campaign. It doesn't change the fact that the first front is still shaky at best
Click through the videos on the "issues" page and you're quickly dropped off on Blip.tv. No new window, just "here you go, thanks for visiting our site, you can go away and not come back now..." Driving your traffic to someone else (especially on a section of the site meant to educate people about your guy) is just not a great recruitment/finance strategy. Not having a way for those visitors to get back once they're on the Blip site, is just pushing them away.
Compare what Rudy's team has rolled out with the Romney team using JumpCut to get their supporters to create videos. Getting people involved, rather than simply talking at them, is much better. Rudy's site is still lacking because it is still little more than a brochure.