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Rock the Debates

Nancy Hanks — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:14:04 -0400

Another "debate intervention" is a website Rock The Debates http://rockthedebates.org/ which interviewed many candidates during the early primary debates asking if they would debate third party or independent candidates should they win the nomination. The answers were candid and definitely worth taking a look at. This is "citizen journalism" at its best!

Live Fact-Checking and Rating of Candidates

porterbayne — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:04:29 -0400

At Ameritocracy.com, we'll be entering the moderator questions and candidate responses on the fly, and users can fact-check the content live.

It's a quick way to rate Obama and McCain quotes and sound bites for how accurate and relevant they are.

Joe, By speaking out, you

mac11 — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:38:59 -0400

Joe,

By speaking out, you did more to help Obama than you could have by continuing to run the page. The behavior of his campaign was outrageous and unethical, and it's going to hurt him if he doesn't clean it up. Imagine if this had happened during the DNC Convention in 2008, the media frenzy and the RNC oppo frenzy that would have ensued.

You are a principled guy and politics is a lot of pressure. What you did shows guts. You stood up not just for yourself but for anyone treated badly and dishonestly by the political system.

Congratulations. It doesn't necessarily feel like it right now, but you showed tremendous leadership.

Matt Stoller
MyDD.com
منتديات

It was a labor of love for

Cristiano — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:54:48 -0400

It was a labor of love for him. Here at TechPresident, we started getting emails from Anthony every now and then, making sure our own tracking of Obama's MySpace friends was up-to-date, and pointing us to his progress elsewhere in the campaign. "I'm working on [the site] in the mornings, lunch breaks, and for a couple of hours every night," he wrote me on March 1st. "Nearly 10,000 friend requests this past week, and all are unsolicited!" he added "This profile has evolved into quite a large community and I'm glad that it seems to be mobilizing people."

Regards,
Cristiano

---------------
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Thank you a lot for this

Cristiano — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:52:19 -0400

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Regards,
Cristiano

Anyone changing their minds

mac11 — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:20:03 -0400

Anyone changing their minds over Obama over this episode is overreacting (or perhaps a troll who really supports another candidate).

First of all, Obama himself had nothing to do with it. Even if you think his people screwed up, مسجات you should still give him a chance to try to rectify the situation.

Secondly, we don't know all of the information or the facts, so you are jumping to conclusions.

Third, choosing a candidate based on how they chose who runs their Myspace profile is just about the most random way to pick a candidate possible.

thanks for

EGS — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:43:32 -0400

thanks for iformation...
betsson

Glad to spark such a lively discussion!

Colin Delany — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:41:56 -0400

There have been some excellent comments over at e.politics as well -- I gathered 'em into a new piece yesterday.

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

online leads to offline

Joshua Levy — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:28:00 -0400

Colin and Nancy aren't talking about opposite ideas. If organizers are only looking to create action in the context of Facebook then, as Colin suggests, there isn't much data pointing to success. But in her article Nancy describes examples of activism originating on Facebook but quickly moving beyond it, towards other online sources and, more importantly, offline.

Seen this way, Facebook can be seen as successful or not depending on your goals. If the goal is list-building and fundraising, it hasn't proven itself much. But if the goal is group-building, that can happen amazingly quickly. The lists and money come later, after a movement is built and it transitions from a Facebook phenomenon to something independent of the platform.

That's a Very Large Brush

Nancy Scola — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:41:40 -0400

Thought-provoking post, Colin. But as the author of a recent article called "Despite Negative Press, Facebook Is a Powerful Agent for Social Change," I will suggest some caveats -- namely that not every political action is, thankfully, a candidate looking for money or an established non-profit building its email list. The three cases I mention in that article are how the relatively tiny group Students for a Free Tibet have used Facebook to organize around the Beijing Olympics, how one Canadian university student used Facebook to draw widespread attention to Burmese monks' Saffron Revolution, and how within the span of just one month a few Colombian professionals used Facebook to pull together global anti-guerilla rallies on the very same day.

As a political tool, Facebook is flawed. In fact, you can fairly easily make a convincing argument that it's fatally flawed. But it's tough to argue with the millions of boots it has put on the ground in circumstances where the political actors have no expectation of every otherwise achieving those goals so cheaply or easily. For me, it's about teasing agency and action out of networks were before it might have just withered away. And should Facebook fade away or get locked up so tightly as to be useless, then that's just incentive for some clever folks to figure out how to draw those connection and tap that energy even more effectively.

I'd offer you the idea that when we talk about the potential of any technology as a political tool -- whether its Facebook or SMS or what have you -- it's important to keep in mind just what kind of political action we're covering with our critique.

Whoa?

gibson_stevens — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:37:16 -0400

Interesting post, but wrong. No one has yet really invested in a well-thought-out strategy yet. The features of Facebook are limited, but the application platform is much less inhibited. And yet, Obama and Clinton have made minimal investments of time and energy in their applications, and McCain's is nowhere to be found. Non-presidential apps by major political groups, organizations, etc., have been few and far between.

To consider the value of 20+ million US users connected via Facebook a dead end at this point is premature.

Full disclosure: I helped produce Clinton's Hillary Gifts - what I expect(ed?) to be the beginning of a longer-term investment...

More of my musings...

Amen

Patrick Ruffini — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:43:10 -0400

Facebook works when you use it for what it was intended for: spreading messages organically through first-hand connections.

The 1,200 limit on group messaging is alone enough to kill off its potential for mass communication. My own experience suggests that clickthroughs from a Facebook message can match or exceed email response rates. But since it can't scale, you'll only see its potential reached at the state level or lower. A Congressional candidate who can get 500 core supporters in his or her Facebook group (not Page) can hit the activism sweet spot, with the ability to use the group to simultaneously engage users, message to them as though it were email, and use the popular Events feature to get them out doing stuff in the real world.

And Pages are just a joke since messages don't reach the inbox and you have to jump through 3-4 hoops just to read them.

I can't say I blame Facebook for these limits either, given pervasive application spam. Lots of people would be empowered to build their own mini-MoveOns with the ability to message everyone in their group -- that's how powerful Facebook *could* be (the Million Against Hillary group alone would be bigger than most advocacy groups could ever hope to be). But since it cuts against the grain of building trust through individual user networks, we won't see it happen.

You busted me

Colin Delany — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:15:16 -0400

Eric, you are as always a most perceptive observer. I did indeed extend the "jump the shark" metaphor beyond its original, Wikipedia-sanctioned meaning of the moment when a successful pop culture phenomenon goes flat. But I'm a writer; I get to do things like that. Heh!

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

A far more sober view of social networks............

Freedomfighter — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:14:05 -0400

This article is pretty, but could use more supporting factors. Here are some serious problems with Facebook and social networks:

1) Dominated by the under 25 crowd. Because of the aqe cut off, young people are cut off from older and more experienced people and activists.

2) The "me too" syndrome and "save the world syndrome". People tend to join groups to support their own thoughts and engage the idea of saving the world, instead of engaging in debater or taking practical action. As of now, things like Facebook suffer a bubble syndrome. Everyone knows Obama is king on Facebook, but what happens in the general election?

3) Engaging other media. So far, social networks ride on free publicity on the internet and news stories. If a social network gets serious, it will have multimedia advertising trying to broaden its network and attract more advertising.

Jumped The Shark?

EricFrenchman — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:58:04 -0400

Colin,

As someone who actually watched Fonzie jump the shark when it was first aired, it implies success prior to the actual shark and then some amount of failure afterwards. I'm not sure if jumping the shark can be applied to Facebook as a successful political tool. :-)

Eric