Archive for February, 2007
National Journal’s Heather Greenfield has put together an excellent article looking at Google’s use as a political tool, which Danny Glover reprinted yesterday in Beltway Blogroll. MyDD’s 2006 political Google bombing attempt got some coverage back in the Fall, but Heather goes into a lot of detail about how influencing Google search results works and the pluses and minuses of trying. Signficantly, she spends more time on targeted Google ads, though, which are likely to be much more useful as a promotional tool down the road.
For example, besides tossing Google bombs, the guys at MyDD also bought ads on the search engine targeted at politically relevant key terms (example: placing an ad that reads “Learn about George Allen. Did George Allen use racial slurs?” on results pages seen by people looking for information about the candidate). MyDD’s Chris Bowers claims a ridiculously good return rate, obviously from reader forwards, since the search ads seem to have yielded 14 page views per penny spent (if true, damned impressive).
If Heather’s piece has only whetted your appetite for search-related information, try this Tech President article on Wikipedia’s expansive influence in candidate search results — think the campaigns are excited to find that a citizen encyclopedia often rates higher than their own official sites?
– cpd
February 27th, 2007
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Hey, I just installed a WordPress plug-in that pops up a little window to preview sites that e.politics links to. The link itself won’t call up the preview, only the little icon that follows the link, and it’s turned off for internal e.politics links. I’m of two minds about the thing, since it is nice to be able to check out a site before you click out, but the little icons interrupt the flow of the text. If you have strong feelings either way, let me know.
– cpd
February 27th, 2007
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Australian Priscilla Brice-Weller has written up another cool use of maps for advocacy purposes, in this case to encourage the transition from incandescent light bulbs to compact flourescents (which are much more energy-efficient). The Yahoo-sponsored site 18 Seconds (named for the time required to change a lightbulb) shows the number of bulbs currently purchased in each U.S. state and the amount of money saved as a result, plus the amount of coal NOT burned and the number of cars that would have to be pulled off the road to have as much effect on overall carbon emissions. Nice work! Reminds me a little of Clear The Air’s Powerplant Pollution Locator, but based on Yahoo Maps instead of a custom map.
– cpd
February 26th, 2007
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Tia Sumler’s article from last week (Five Must-Dos When You’re Planning A Web Project) has just been chosen as the lead story in this week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. Very cool! It was an excellent article, well-written and with just the right bit of no-bullshit attitude — a fine piece of sass if I ever read one. You might just be seeing more of Tia in the coming weeks, assuming that new-found blogger fame doesn’t send her into an Anna Nicole-style spiral of excess and self-abuse (note: cocaine’s a hell of a drug, or so I hear). What article idea do YOU want to pitch to e.politics? Fame, dissipation and inevitable ruin await!
– cpd
February 26th, 2007
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Guest article! Tia Sumler, an old friend and the web guru at civilrights.org, has plumbed the depths and scaled the heights of her experiences with online projects and put together a list of things that you just might oughta do when you’re starting out on something new. This piece, like Heather Gardner-Madras’s recent article on choosing designers, can save you a ridiculous amount of time, money and grief (you have been warned).
Five Must-Dos When You’re Planning A Web Project
New online campaign? Site redesign? Transitioning to a CMS? Whatever online project you’re undertaking, here are five things that you must do. (There are a lot of other things you should do or could do, but I’m a busy lady. Five is all you get).
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February 21st, 2007
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Earlier today, while looking through a social media article at iMedia Connection, I came across a link to a Lakshmi Chaudhry piece in The Nation from a few weeks ago in which she takes some serious potshots at the new culture of online collective creativity.
Adopting the tone of scolds throughout time, she slams the younger generation (damn kids, get off my lawn!) as shallow and perpetually obsessed with dreams of personal fame. Citing carefully filtered sources (among them, the musings of reality TV stars and some 16-year-olds posting on a site called iWannaBeFamous.com), she draws the inevitable conclusion that as a culture we’re drowning in a sea of narcissism:
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February 21st, 2007
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Woo ha! It’s less than a month before the annual gathering-of-the-tribe known as the Politics Online Conference, and you’d better be planning to go or you’re really gonna miss out. Last year’s conference gave me the idea to start this e.politics website you’re reading at this very moment; you never know what kind of trouble we might fall into THIS time around. Bonus for 2007: I’m moderating a panel, God help us all. And, though nothing is set in stone, I may have another tasty little surprise for you kids come conference time. All for the low, low price of $495, which I’m sure is just sitting there burning a hole in your pocket.
To whet your appetite, here are more IPDI interviews with prominent online strategists, in this case two folks who happen to be friends of mine. Time to pimp my peeps!
– cpd
February 20th, 2007
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The other thing that jumped out this weekend as I’ve been reading the reviews of presidential campaign websites is just how crazy early in the electoral process it is for so many political junkies to be producing so much analysis of the 2008 campaign. This is far from an original idea — it’s been obvious to a lot of folks — but it still startles me that we’re paying so much attention to campaign minutiae almost a year out from the FIRST primary and close to two years from the general election.
Meanwhile, a world away from the couple of dozen sites over which bloggers and the media have been obsessing, real work is getting done every day in the online political world. THOUSANDS of advocacy campaigns are creating effective websites, experimenting with cutting-edge tools and building up coalitions of (sometimes) millions of people passionate about an issue. And, while many reporters and bloggers have produced excellent analyses of McCain’s site layout or Obama’s Facebook outreach, isn’t it just as interesting that as of a week ago, seven out of twelve Kansas City mayoral candidates had video clips on their websites?
I understand why it’s natural for political junkies to obsess about ’08: we have a lame-duck president, a potentially deadlocked Congress, a divisive war in progress, some compelling characters in the race, and the chance for real political change depending on how things turn out. But it’s a loooooooong time before anyone casts a presidential ballot, and in the meantime, we shouldn’t miss the myriad OTHER places where the ‘net is changing the way politics works.
– cpd
February 19th, 2007
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Over the past few days, I’ve been storing up links to various reviews of presidential websites and online strategies, planning to prepare a comprehensive wrap-up of the criticism so far. The interesting thing is, I’ve become more intrigued by the stories themselves than by their subjects: I’m fascinated by the implications of the level of coverage we’re seeing so far. The presidential candidates can’t hardly make a move online without it being dragged out in public and dissected, often in painful detail.
I’m not talking about the Macaca moments, blogger controversies or the unpropitious arrival of various kinds of unflattering documents, but about serious analysis of intentional campaign tools and strategies, such as websites, social networking outreach, blogs and social media. We’ve seen this sort of criticism of policy and political decisions coming from pundits and bloggers for years, but now a large enough group of online political professionals is writing in public that the degree and level of discussion of online strategy is astonishing this far in advance of anything resembling an election.
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February 19th, 2007
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Have a good (long) weekend! Coming soon — a wrap-up of presidential site reviews.
– cpd
February 16th, 2007
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