techPresident - matt stoller - Comments

MyBO from back in the day

Jack Mitchell — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:49:23 -0400

A few quick pointers:
-MyBO was critical in organizing New England activists to get to NH all through 2007 and up to the primary.
-The MyBO Blog allows newbies to find their "blogging legs", then they can move on to the greater blogscape.
-The MyBO group listserves get the word out.
-The Admins don't "airbrush" the content in the blog comment, except when coments are waay over the line. Criticism and dissent is allowed.

I used MyBO continually from 3/07 to 1/08 for organizational purposes and information. Since the NH primary, I hardly use it, but anticipate that it will come back into play as November approaches.

Followers vs. participants

cfinnie — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:12:08 -0400

At my local DFA meeting last night, we had quite a talk about how to keep a movement like this going without a leader. Without a charismatic candidate to rally behind. Was there a candidate we could get behind? I know some groups that have done that--mostly moving to local or regional candidates. Was there an issue we could support? Some DFA groups I know of have done that. But finding a purpose for a bunch of people who came together around a single candidate is not as easy as you might think.

As one woman observed, people want to be lead. Following is what we know how to do. Being self-directed politically is still new to most of us. Top-down campaigns have been the rule since the rise of political machines and particularly since the dominance of mass media in campaigns. In the Dean campaign, they honestly didn't have the resources to manage us much. Joe Trippi has admitted that more than a few times. We did a lot ourselves because we had to. So, when a local Obama supporter recently complained about how much material they had to produce themselves, I had to laugh. I told her about making flyers from the Dean website in 2004. And told her she was lucky not to have some overpaid political consultant telling her what she could and couldn't do.

Still, many of us who got active in that campaign and others, have remained active. We have moved on to other groups, other issues, other candidates. If that happens again--and I believe the way the Obama campaign is structured will encourage that--we will see another surge in civic participation. The first was a game changer. The second will solidify the gains. And I predict we will see a transformation in civic life.

Obama is sooo 2007

Freedomfighter — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:23:11 -0500

The youngest of voters are at risk for identity politics. Not too surprising but with Obama, his charisma has wiped out substance to the point of becoming parody. Yes! We can join the mob in believing in the audacity of false hope and no change! Yes! We can!

http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1712

As for Romney, he lost because is was largely an unknown and had too many competitors. Had some of the competitors been pruned out and then supported Romney, things would be different. Keep your eyes open, from what I understand he has not released his delegates.

Debate footage set to the Rocky theme

jpa — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:37:05 -0400

How did you miss the best video of the week??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDtLv3I_UaY

Hands down the best video.

abrad2345 missing

FredoJam — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:41:14 -0400

Are we surfing the same net? Funniest, most intriguing, most provocative viral video of the week was "Rudy Giuliani's ""Not Gay like Fred Thompson" posted by abrad2345. Did you not include it because it really is coming from the Giuliani camp? I'm still 50/50 regarding its origin.

Adjusted the numbers

Joshua Levy — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:38:59 -0400

Thanks, Mike. I've fixed the numbers and the video we're linking to.

Fred's Announcement Video

Michael Turk — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:18:10 -0400

Your numbers are way off. I'm not sure where your YouTube numbers came from, but our site on YouTube (www.youtube.com/FredThompson) is curently at more than 25,000 views.

Keep in mind that is only a fraction of total views because we're using Blip.tv as our player (http://fredthompson.blip.tv). Blip has registered almost 150,000 views through their site and from our home page.

I'd also add that the video you included is the commercial we ran Wednesday night, not the announcement video.

It's also within the nature of Web 2.0

Jonathan Trenn — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 01:58:35 -0400

It seems that a healthy combination of what Alan and Michael is taking place here. The very nature of Web 2.0 is openness.

The GOP is usually more organized, more disciplined, more top down. For whatever reason, the powers that be when it comes to implementing a Web 2.0 effort strongly resist letting go of the message. No surprise there. That doesn't mesh with what Web 2.0 is about, so it fails.

And a result of the GOP being in control of the White House and the both Houses of Congress for the majority of the past eight years, has been an insurgent and activist left, reading to move forward regardless of official party structure. The momentum was already their.

I'd also add that two more things. In my discussions with vendors in the internet strategy space, I've found that if they have political leanings, it is more often to the left than right.

And lastly, in 2004, we had several Democratic candidates running, each with internet efforts. OK, they were rudimentary, but they were there. On the GOP side, we had just one, the president. That means that entering 2008, there were that many more campaign vets from the Dem side that now been able to discard those training wheels and move forward. Not so on the GOP side. The depth of experience may have been the same, but there were just more people on the Democratic side that had experience, connections, and understanding of social media.

www.digitalstreetjournal.com

Excellent sheet...

David All — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:37:20 -0400

cdharrion - I know it seems rudimentary, but you should also add the category "blog on website."

That's another area where Republicans are completely lacking (save Mitt's ~~Five Guys~~ Five Brothers blog.
________________________________________
David All
The David All Group
http://davidallgroup.com
________________________________________

The Dems are Definitely Winning Online

cdharrison — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:01:04 -0400

Take a look at this: http://projects.cdharrison.com/prez08/

I've compiled a table of all of the candidates and what types of services they are using in addition to their campaign websites. The Democrats are beating the Republicans hands down.

It's been a while since I last updated. I'll try to post an update by week's end if any candidates have added to their online arsenal...

GOPTeamLeader, Semantics, and Taking Back the Party

Michael Turk — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 14:25:46 -0400

Having been the guy to officially 'pull the plug' on Team Leader, I can tell you it was not a matter of 'giving up' on it. It was, in the end, a tragic loss due to my overestimation of how much support I actually had for creating a Republican destination through GOP.com.

The idea was to build a bigger and better program that was more open, more engaging and a true online community - something akin to a cross between RedState and Townhall. The difference would be the connection to a voter file to register, ID and turnout voters, inviting self-mobilization through volunteer activities, and syndication of the system across state party, candidate and activist websites.

We had two problems with the Team Leader program and attempted to address both as part of the rebranding and retooling.

Our first problem was the name. The name of the program actually ended up limiting its success. When you focus group things before you release them, you discover issues like this. As it turned out, a lot of people were afraid of the "Team Leader" title because, while they wanted to be involved, they felt intimidated by the idea of "being in charge" of anything. We actually saw this on the Bush campaign and changed the name from Bush Team Leaders to Bush Volunteers. When we did, our take rate exploded.

The other problem was the disconnect between the Team Leader effort and GOP.com. As in a lot of places, the RNC had different divisions doing different (and often competing) things online. GOP.com had been run out of Communications while GOPTeamLeader was run out of Political. They competed for budget dollars and eyeballs. In redesigning GOP.com after the 2004 elections, we combined all those efforts under one roof. We changed the name to GOP Teams, and the verbiage to being 'a part of the team'.

As I said, a much broader social networking program and more options for true involvement were to be the foundation of the effort. This ultimately ended up being the MyGOP tool - and was a faint shadow of the original idea.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the opposition to open systems that I encountered. The aversion to letting go of the message and allowing individual supporters to grab and run with it proved to great. With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I would not have dismantled a relatively successful if top-heavy system like Team Leader to end up with what exists now.

This is illustrative of a larger problem the GOP has. This is where I part with David on his belief that a party-sponsored web 2.0 infrastructure will bridge the digital divide. I believe that divide is a function of a much deeper distrust of letting the message go. If the GOP is going to be successful online, we cannot wait for the party to do it.

As the Democrats have shown, this will need to be organized by those in the party who get it. We will have to drag the party apparatus, kicking and screaming, to the dance.

Dems vs Reps

Alan Rosenblatt — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:28:55 -0400

David, first off, I enjoyed your piece in the Politico this morning. I have long been interested in the disparity between the Dems and Reps online.

Interestingly, the Republicans were the first out of the gate in embracing online community with their GOPTeamLeader platform a few years back, but they ultimately gave up on it (they do seem to be dabbling in it again as a link on the RNC site, but it is more focused on transactional asks, as opposed to true community building).

I have a theory why.

In general, I think the internet lends itself better to public interest issues more than it does to private interest issues. Specifically, the broader the impact of a policy, the better the social networking aspects of the internet work for a campaign.

Imagine trying to create a broad grassroots campaign to promote the increased profits of a large corporation. It just won't fly.

That is because the internet is most powerful when it converts email lists of activists into strategic advocacy communities. The power of the internet lies in creating a deeper sense of loyalty to a campaign's goals because the community members have internalized their stakes in the outcome.

This dynamic fits most progressive and social conservative issues, but does not really fit business issues.

Thus, to the extent the top Republican candidates are having difficulties connecting with the social conservatives within their party, it makes sense that their internet strategies, even if they are comparably as good as the Democrats, won't work as well.

Alan Rosenblatt
Executive Director, Internet Advocacy Center
AKA DrDigiPol (drdigipol.com)