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Aug 30, 2008

How Obama Really Did It - " it was the network, stupid!"

The social-networking strategy that took an obscure senator to the doors of the White House.

By David Talbot

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Web Jockey: Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the 29-year-old cofounder and chief technology officer of Blue State Digital, the company behind Obama’s social technologies, says that “on every metric, this campaign has operated on a scale that has exceeded what was done before.” Beyond fund-raising, the Web tools enabled event planning, phone banks, and targeted e-mailing. 
Credit: Porter Gifford
MULTIMEDIA
video Jascha Franklin-Hodge talks about his company’s work with Barack Obama’s online social network.
photo View photos of parties organized through Obama’s social-networking site.

Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign manager and Internet impresario, describes Super Tuesday II--the March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island--as the moment Barack Obama used social tech nology to decisive effect. The day's largest hoard of dele gates would be contested in Texas, where a strong showing would require exceptional discipline and voter-education efforts. In Texas, Democrats vote first at the polls and then, if they choose, again at caucuses after the polls close. The caucuses award one-third of the Democratic delegates.

Hillary Clinton's camp had about 20,000 volunteers at work in Texas. But in an e-mail, Trippi learned that 104,000 Texans had joined Obama's social- networking site, www.my.barackobama.com, known as MyBO. MyBO and the main Obama site had already logged their share of achievements, particularly in helping rake in cash. The month before, the freshman senator from Illinois had set a record in American politics by garnering $55 million in donations in a single month. In Texas, MyBO also gave the Obama team the instant capacity to wage fully networked campaign warfare. After seeing the volunteer numbers, Trippi says, "I remember saying, 'Game, match--it's over.'"

The Obama campaign could get marching orders to the Texans registered with MyBO with minimal effort. The MyBO databases could slice and dice lists of volunteers by geographic micro region and pair people with appropriate tasks, including prepping nearby voters on caucus procedure. "You could go online and download the names, addresses, and phone numbers of 100 people in your neighborhood to get out and vote--or the 40 people on your block who were undecided," Trippi says. "'Here is the leaflet: print it out and get it to them.' It was you, at your computer, in your house, printing and downloading. They did it all very well." Clinton won the Texas primary vote 51 to 47 percent. But Obama's people, following their MyBO playbook, so overwhelmed the chaotic, crowded caucuses that he scored an overall victory in the Texas delegate count, 99 to 94. His showing nearly canceled out Clinton's win that day in Ohio. Clinton lost her last major opportunity to stop the Obama juggernaut. "In 1992, Carville said, 'It's the economy, stupid,'" Trippi says, recalling the exhortation of Bill Clinton's campaign manager, James Carville. "This year, it was the network, stupid!"...


Aug 29, 2008

Sarah Palin, Republican VP Candidate, in Vogue

Ed: Obama selects Biden for experience. McCain selects Palin for Hollywood appeal. What a great race!

  • Obama talks change. McCain selected change with his VP designation.
  • McCain has the experience edge. Obama admits his weakness by selecting Biden.
  • Obama paints McCain into Bush's camp. The Palin selection distances McCain from the past.
  • When it comes to issues, few people truely believe either candidate. Washington stops innovation.
  • Obama has the young voter; McCain has the older voters. Women's reaction to the Palin choice may decide the 2008 presidential outcome.
Bottomline, the change message has been weakened. Experience goes to McCain. Should be an interesting race. Your thoughts?

Sarah in Vogue

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Alaska's Governess, Sarah Palin, was photographed recently for an upcoming issue of Vogue.

No, this isn't an advanced copy, just some Photo shoppin'.


Click here for the Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President blog, whence came the bumper sticker below.  Gov Palin’s official website is here.


McCain - Palin

AdNets Weekend

Washington State Lottery is selecting new advertising agency
Bizjournals.com, NC - 4 hours ago
The finalists for the contract were Dave Syferd & Partners and Jones Advertising, Interpublic Group’s TM Advertising and Omnicom Group’s DDB. ...
Good Life China (GLCC) Completes Advertising Production
FOXBusiness - 7 hours ago
... (GLCC) http://www.goodlifechina.com/ is pleased to announce that it has finished production on a multi-media advertising campaign that will include TV, ...PINK:GLCC -OTC:CMTX

CNET News
Google to go ahead with Yahoo deal: report
Reuters - 2 hours ago
(Reuters) - Google Inc., facing a US Justice Department probe of its search-advertisingpartnership with Yahoo Inc., will proceed with the agreement by ...
Google cautions regulators factor into Yahoo deal MarketWatch
Google says Yahoo online advertising deal to begin soon Direct Traffic Media
Google to Start Yahoo Deal by October, Schmidt Says (Update4) Bloomberg
Search Engine Journal - The Daily Deal (subscription)
all 63 news articles »  GOOG - YHOO
Indiatimes to start mobile advertising service by year-end
Business Standard, India - 11 hours ago
Com is planning to launch an advertising service on mobile phones by the end of this year. "The service 'Adringles' is based on ring back tone medium which ...

24dash
Rightmove Net Income Increases on Gain in Advertising Revenue
Bloomberg - 16 hours ago
Rightmove is taking advertising business from local and regional newspapers by charging less and about 90 percent of all new and existing homes for sale in ...
Estate agency casualties will mount, claims Rightmove Telegraph.co.uk
'Major downturn' for property market ITN
Rightmove gains as home sellers gravitate to the net Finance Markets
Telegraph.co.uk
all 12 news articles »
The benefits of advertising
SmartBrief, DC - 6 hours ago
Advertising Age (08/25) Want to dig deeper? SmartBrief brings you news, research, and other information related to this issue. To track this topic, ...
Report: 2Q good for tourism
Bizjournals.com, NC - 3 hours ago
Some of the advertising dollars were spent enticing Florida residents to take an in-state overnight trip. The organization also began an out-of-state ...
Florida tourism up 1.2 percent in 2nd quarter BusinessWeek
all 15 news articles »
FROM ADVERTISING SECTION
San Jose Mercury News,  USA - 5 hours ago
By WHEELBASE COMMUNICATIONS Hyundai thinks a little smaller: As if Hyundai s sub-compact Accent isn t small enough, the Korean automaker is seriously ...
From an advertising section
San Jose Mercury News,  USA - 5 hours ago
Saab s size matters: It has been a fairly standard practice in the automotive industry to make every new iteration of a model slightly larger than its ...GM
Online nudges radio advertising globally
National Business Review, New Zealand - 18 hours ago
Carat are referring to advertising share rather than audience numbers, but the numbers show the internet’s global share of ad spending jumping from 7.3 per ...

Social Media Weekend

SpectrumDNA, Inc. Taps Seth Levenson to Lead Product Marketing
MarketWatch - 1 hour ago
http://www.spectrumdna.com, a studio that develops social media applications and enterprises, announced today that it has brought in Seth Levenson to lead ...

Mashable
Anybody Can Be a Social Media Rock Star
Mashable, CA - 3 hours ago
Is there any hope for someone to succeed in social networking and social media in general if they aren’ta “people person?” It just doesn’t seem likely, ...

Mashable
How Do You Execute Social Media? Find Out on October 15-16
Mashable, CA - 2 hours ago
The 4th Communitelligence Executing Social Media Conference & Roundtables is a must-attend event for anyone in need of good advice on using the new social ...
Local Shops Have Leg Up on Social Sites
ADOTAS, NY - 6 hours ago
Not only does advertising on social media give local shops the national appeal, it also maximizes ROI while allowing advertisers full control of budget. ...
From College to CRE: Facebook GlobeSt. com
all 2 news articles »

Canada.com
Social media mobs the national conventions
Los Angeles Times, CA - Aug 26, 2008
Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties. Delicious: It's not often that ...
The Nation and the Obama campaign World Socialist Web Site
Hometown Papers Splurge On Convention Coverage Wall Street Journal
Blogging Down the Walls of Politics CMSWire
Huffington Post - Asianjournal.com
all 581 news articles »
Social media 'ideal for branding'
Digital Response Media, UK - 12 hours ago
Internet marketing executives would be well advised to focus on using social media for branding rather than sales purposes. This is according to British ...
The social media corporate identity crisis
ZDNet Asia, Asia - 22 hours ago
Either way, social media, with its often loose standards regarding user identity, has opened up a Pandora’s Box of opportunities for confusion about who is, ...
Retailers Use Social Media To Spur Back-To-School Sales
InformationWeek, NY - Aug 27, 2008
By KC Jones More retailers are turning to social media to drum up business among back-to-school shoppers, according to recent research. ...

Mashable
How to Find Statistics on Social Media
Mashable, CA - Aug 28, 2008
Selling management on the value of investing time and resources into building an online community using social media is a challenge, and you need all of the ...
Social Media Group Acquisition Called Off
Washington Post, United States - Aug 27, 2008
A month ago, Livingston Communications, a local PR firm that focuses on social media, announced plans to be acquired by the Social Media Group in Toronto. ...EPA:MLSMG

Blog Weekend

Blog auctions to help Mesa plane crash victim
Arizona Republic, AZ - 5 hours ago
Stephanie Nielsen, who along with her husband Christian was injured, has a well-known mothers blog, nieniedialouges.blogspot.com. ...

Los Angeles Times
Subscribe to this Blog
Washington Post, United States - 5 hours ago
A Republican friend of mine in New York is very pleased with Sen. John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. ...
8/29: Rightroots Rejoice Over Palin National Journal
space blog
New Scientist (subscription), UK - 5 hours ago
I attended the Great Planet Debate earlier this month in Laurel, Maryland, which featured plenty of scientific debate about the relative merits of different ...
Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog ...
Kaiser network.org, DC - 7 hours ago
While mainstream news coverage is still a primary source of information for the latest in policy debates and the health care marketplace, online blogs have ...
Panel on Pa. health reform focuses on price tag Forbes

ABC News
Lindsay Lohan shuns dad on blog
Sify, India - 17 hours ago
Hollywood actor Lindsay Lohan has hit back at her father Michael Lohan on her MySpaceblog for the comments he made on her girlfriend DJ Samantha Ronson. ...
Lindsay Lohan defends girl pal, raps dad on blog CIOL
Lohan lashes out at father on blog abc7.com
Lindsay Lohan Attacks “Bully” Father On Her Blog eFluxMedia
FN' Famous - Contactmusic.com
Fool Blog: Stocks We'd Recommend to Our Grandmas
Motley Fool - 3 hours ago
By Brian Richards, Joe Magyer, and Todd Wenning That was the topic of discussion around Fool HQ the other day, and a few analysts, editors, and writers put ...
Blog Buzz: Convention blogs; Hawthorn Woods
Cary Grove Countryside, IL - 4 hours ago
Jack Franks, D-63rd, and Margaret McSweeney, wife of former 8th District candidate David McSweeney, will blog from the floors of the Democratic and ...

Aljazeera.net
Malaysia blocks controversial blog
Aljazeera.net, Qatar - 15 hours ago
The Malaysian government has blocked access to a popular blog known for its sensational political postings, sparking complaints that the government has ...
Malaysia Today ban - 'Gestapo in action' Malaysia Kini
Malaysia blocks anti-government news Web site The Associated Press
MALAYSIA: Government blocks popular news site CPJ Press Freedom Online
Cantor Chosen for VP! (By a Blog)
Washington Post, United States - Aug 28, 2008
Cantor's endorsement by the influential conservative blog marks the apex of the Virginian's VP boomlet. Never quite mentioned on any final short-lists, ...

Telegraph.co.uk
Malaysia censors blog after poor poll results
Financial Times, UK - 21 hours ago
By John Burton in Singapore Malaysia's leading political blog was being blocked yesterday in what was seen as a crackdown on internet websites credited with ...
How Anwar won the Malay vote Electric New Paper
A blogger takes office in Malaysia Christian Science Monitor

tEarn Exitmerical Network: Google Chrome KIS Browser

In designing websites, I’ve always consider the many, cluttered rows of the chrome as part of the page’s UI. Thus, we’ve moved away from tabs at the top of the page to simple menus on the left (see http://tEarn.com). Google Chrome is cleaning up the mess, replacing the search/URL/address with an omni-box. Great move.

Further, an automated iGoogle/myYahoo makes a lot of sense.

KIS.

A fresh take on the browser
9/01/2008 02:10:00 PM
At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.

This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We'll post an update here as soon as it's ready.

LinkedIn Rolls Out Enhanced Groups Features; Facebook adds Live Feed

Ed: Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIn have taken dramatically different approaches to social networking, communications.
  • Myspace is a free-for-all with their founding as social circles for groupies to touch their favorite musicians. Unfortunately, this has expanded to include hookers and other undesirable audiences. 
  • Facebook started with the top universities. Although, they have lost universities like Stanford, users prefer them over the new Affinity Circle. Facebook has grown to attract high school students and boomers. International growth makes them number one. The networking feature is primarily wall posts (quick comments) on news feed items like photos, videos, or status reports (i.e. what am I doing now) Today, Facebook released Live Feed, a tab from the home page that shows real changes without clicking. Cool.
  • LinkedIn has cleaned up their cluttered interface and added the discussion boards for groups. They recently opened groups for any user; and now adds the discussion board as a group feature. Structurally, it is similar to the question, answer feature. It is integrated into the newsfeed like feature on the home page. On it's first day, the discussions have been immediately popular.
The pace of change is astounding. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo look like slow moving dinosaurs by comparison.

Last week, we wrote about LinkedIn’s recent issues with its Groups - as part of a new platform rollout, a number of management features were apparently buggy, while others had been removed entirely.

Tonight sees the release of a number of new features on the platform that should quell some of these concerns. Among the new features are a centralized hub page for every group, where group members can come together and converse with each other in one place. The release also introduces enhanced group and user management features, including a searchable roster.

While it’s nice to see LinkedIn enhancing its groups functionality, its surprising to see that the company has taken this long to introduce them - most of them seem to be fairly basic. That said, the added community features should be a boon to the site’s professional user base as they look to enhance their connections with their peers.



Aug 28, 2008

Big, Ailing Newspaper Bails On Associated Press

I've converted a local newspaper group from a legacy CMS system to a publishing system based on the open blog platform. The publisher eliminates bandwidth, CMS bugs, server load, server capacity, and infrastructure costs. The feature benefits are a modern publishing service with RSS feeds, community comments, dynamic widgets, and instant control over published content - without wasting time chasing consultants, service providers, and writers. 


How did the publisher and I persuade the staff to change?

Obama may think the population wants change, but the newspaper staff hates change. With busy, regular schedules, there is no time left for learning new methods and dealing with the hundreds of small problems that occur because of change. 
  • The staff felt that blogging was not publishing. They are correct. 95% of blogs are personal diaries. However, the 5% operated by professionals have slowly changed user perceptions. Blogs like Techcrunch, Gawker, Cnet, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Engadet produce more news than traditional journalists. Efficiency from self publishing accelerates content to readers. Openness promotes reader, writer communications without editorial control. It's a matter of time before legacy CMS will be replaced by open blog platforms.
  • The staff had concerns of the look and feel of a blog. We provided custom CSS, templates, images, and javascript to both emulate the old system and make improvements that the staff always wanted.
  • The long term view is that paper is expensive and wasteful. Paper and distribution has become an increasing percentage of advertising revenues. As oil prices rise to increase lumber, paper, printing, and distribution costs, the long term view is simple. Even if subscribers prefer paper, newspapers cannot sustain based on a paper model alone. Whether 1 year, 2 years, 10 years - paper is dead.
  • Personal services assure a smooth transition. Our availability to solve day to day, moment to moment problems made the difference. Our focus is to make the staff self sufficient. Once they learn all the details, blogging reduces steps, coordination with outside services, and saves time for every staff member. Free time is good in the fast pace world of publishing.
  • Of course, the publisher is motivated by the new tEarn advertising model. 50 to 100 fold lift in eCPM is the key for new growth for local newspapers.
Are you ready for web 2.0 advertising and publishing?

Big, Ailing Newspaper Bails On Associated Press

printingpress.jpgRemember way back when, way back in June, when there was a big blogosphere hubbub about the Associated Press not letting bloggers regurgitate its copy without compensation? Whatever became of that? In any case, amidst the fuming and harrumphing,Dorian Benkoil pointed out the AP's real problem wasn't that it had irked some bloggers -- it was that the co-operative's own members might be bailing on it.

Smart guy. Editor & Publisher:

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis has become the latest, and so far the largest, daily newspaper to inform the Associated Press that it plans to drop the service in two years.

MinnPost.com reports that the paper informed AP that it will no longer use the service as of the fall of 2010. AP requires that member newspapers give two years' notice before dropping the service.

The Star Tribune joins a string of other daily papers who have either given notice or revealed plans to cut the service in recent months. Those include The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Wash.; The Post Register of Idaho Falls; The Bakersfield Californian; and The Yakima Herald-Republic and Wenatchee World, both in Washington.

The recent decisions to drop AP service follow a planned AP rate structure change, which was announced in 2007 and takes effect in 2009. The rate change has already prompted complaints from numerous newspapers, including two groups of editors who wrote angry letters to AP to complain in late 2007 and early 2008.

As MinnPost and E&P point out, this isn't a philosophic dispute, just one about price. And we're not convinced that the Strib will really walk away -- it's sort of hard to imagine what they'll fill their pages with if they don't have AP copy. Then again, the Strib's free fall has been steeper than most mid-sized daily papers, which means that it's been plummeting like a stone over the last decade. So perhaps Avista Capital, the NY-based PE company that has been bleeding money ever since it bought the paper in early 2007, thinks it can find an even cheaper news source. Where would that be?

See Also: The AP's Biggest Problem Isn't Bloggers. It's Its Own Newspapers

TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present

Ed: Advertisers want:

  • Targeting 
  • Immediate ROI
  • Required ad viewing

TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present

Forrester says targeted ads and a portal-like menu of options are coming to your set

Aug 27, 2008

-By Brian Morrissey


adweek/photos/stylus/25535-TV.jpg

Forrester: The shift will help TV remain the dominant advertising medium.

NEW YORK TV advertising is poised to change dramatically over the next decade, embracing the kind of targeting and user control already common on the Web, according to a new report by Forrester Research.
 
Forrester lays out a decade-long evolution that will ultimately result in most programming delivered on-demand with targeted ad messages based on location and behavior, along with community functions.
 
This "Personal TV," as Forrester calls it, would also deliver a Web-like experience for consumers, with a portal-like menu of programming options and search functions.
 
Forrester sees this shift giving TV an opportunity to remain the dominant ad medium it is today. While a personalized offering would seem geared toward further audience fragmentation, Forrester anticipates systems that would allow advertisers to reach mass audiences in a targeted manner. What's more, cable companies, with subscribers' billing histories, know more about users than Web companies. Ultimately, TV will work like the Web, enabling viewers to interact with ads up to the point of purchase.
 
"The players here are the people who own the popular programs and then the distributors who have digital systems capable of serving programs into set top boxes," said David Graves, the report's author.
 
That hasn't stopped Web giants such as Google and Microsoft from trying to break into the medium and extend their reach across TV advertising. Google is placing ads through Echostar's Dish Network and Microsoft has plans to build an ad network after buying Navic Networks.
 
In the near term, Forrester expects experimentation in video on-demand offerings by cable companies, like CBS's CSI on Comcast that includes ads that cannot be skipped.

Forrester predicts that in 2010, targeting and on-demand programming systems will be up and running, before the big industry-wide shift takes place from 2012-18.
 
What's taken so long? Forrester spreads the blame across the TV landscape. Cable companies didn't build-out video on-demand as an ad-supported platform, networks protected the lucrative status quo and agencies didn't push for innovation. 

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