Archive for April, 2007
With a nod to Daniel Gross’s occasional Slate pieces on unusual economic indicators, let’s do a quick drive-by of the Los Angeles Times’s parking garage. What we’d have seen a few weeks ago, according to one of the LA-based journalists I met today (and who’d no-doubt prefer to remain anonymous), was a big sign advertising parking spaces available for long-term rental. Ouch! So many people have left the paper lately that the company had a plethora of leftover parking spaces…not exactly the sign of a healthy and vibrant newsroom. Sure, a little bit of fat-cutting can help most organizations, but this time I think they managed to nick an artery. Next up: renting out all those empty desks….
– cpd
April 18th, 2007
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Hi y’all, I’ve left the cold, sad and dark East for a few days in the soft sun of Southern California — I’m at a journalism seminar in LA. Not sure if I’ll be writing much while I’m here, but some zippy new article ideas should start to brew while I’m sitting in on discussions. I’m back Saturday; perhaps by then the clouds of late winter (real and metaphorical) will have started to break.
– cpd
April 18th, 2007
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[Update: see the comment at the end of the article for more on this subject — and an important correction...]
The author of the French blog Netpolitique left a trackback/comment the other day on my article from a few weeks ago on saturation coverage of the U.S. presidential candidates online:
Will the JFK of the Net be French?
Not to sound haughty, but French presidential candidates have been there and done that, and more, for over two years. They are now headed into the final stretch of a bruising political campaign which has ignited the French blogosphere for months now…
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April 16th, 2007
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Hi y’all, a friend of e.politics who shall remain nameless ([cough] Laura S. Quinn [cough]) has written in to highlight the TechSoup NetSquared Innovation Awards, the voting for which ends today at 5:00 Pacific time (8 pm in dog years). 150 no-doubt excellent projects are up for consideration, and you could do your part to help 20 of them receive valuable prizes (i.e., funding) by voting for your favorite initiatives (up to 10) today. I would never presume to tell you for whom to cast your ballot ([cough] Idealware [cough]), nosirree, but I hope you’ll go to the NetSquared site and participate in the democratic process in the most dispassionate and objective of ways.
Bear in mind that I AM watching you with an All-Seeing Eye, as always, and those of you who fail to vote (or who do vote but, shall we say, less wisely than you should) will feel the vengeful sting of my lash in ways that the sensible fear to contemplate. So let’s all do the right thing, eh? Vote early! Vote often!
– cpd
April 16th, 2007
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So, the other night I saw a strange thing while watching cable (no, tragically, psychedelics were not involved) — it was an ad for a cell phone that was clearly intended for older people who were scared of cell phones. The ad itself was aimed at their boomer children, which is a logical audience, since the kids might well want to buy a phone for their parents for their own convenience. I thought it was an interesting niche and mentioned it to my media-obsessed roommate. The other day, he ran across a print ad that gave more detail about the phone. The salient features:
- Big buttons
- Big fonts
- Veeeeeeeery simple functions (the print ad’s headline: “It doesn’t play games, take pictures, or give you the weather)
- Clear, loud sound and a nice soft cushiony bit for your ear
- 24-hour operators who can walk you through any function, including checking your voicemail
- A normal 12-button phone, or an even simpler version that has three buttons — the operator, a number of your choice (no doubt, your kid’s number) and 911.
- The final genius bit is the name: Jitterbug, which is clearly designed to sound fun and also familiar to the over-65 set
Why bring this up on a politics site? First, because it’s a fascinating marketing approach, and second because it’s aimed at a niche that we online warriors often miss. The standard word on mobile marketing is that it works best for younger audiences, but the Jitterbug is a sign that this may not be true for long — soon enough, EVERYONE will have a cell phone. Campaigns, think about this: mobile won’t be an experiment or an afterthought forever.
– cpd
April 13th, 2007
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- I just caught Susan Finkelpearl cheating on us with Democracy in Action! Moreover, she’s brazenly flaunting her Tips (for Sprucing up Your Website), and in public, too!
- Does User-Generated Content Work for Political Campaigns? Todd Zeigler takes a gentle sip of the Kool-Aid: “It seems to me that truly allowing your supporters to carry your message for you will ultimately result in more supporters, more donations and ultimately better online results”
- More Second Life marketing skepticism. Wagner James Au says, “To play in Second Life, corporations must first come to a humbling realization: in the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal, and unimaginative.” Sounds like a Friday night in Georgetown to me. (A Bivings Report find).
- Blog P.I. tweaks his Magnum moustache saucily before looking at which candidates are buying Google ads on their own names AND those of their rivals (sneaky — me likee).
- A look at two niches in the blog-o-rama — an Analysis of Black Bloggers in the Blogosphere and Feminist Blogs: Activism, Journalism, or Masochism (I’m voting for the latter, as always). Via F-email Fightback.
- A YouTube for conservatives. Wonkette wishes them well: “Good luck, guys! We bet Michelle Malkin would make you a video of her pretending to personally kill every single Arab and Mexican! She could wear like a KKK robe over her bikini or whatever.”
- Also in Wonkette, a lesson in why some people should avoid technology, as the Prez tries to blow up a hydrogen-powered car (oh, the humanity).
- More niches, bitches: A socnet for political junkies, launched by Campaigns and Elections magazine (Via David All).
- News from the Edwards campaign: John Edwards Debuts Saturday Podcasts (my mom will have to learn to use mp3s), and also modifies online fundraising practice to be nicer to folks who are sending supportive messages to his wife.
- Tips on tools: Seth Godin says, campaigns need to beware the too-frequent mass email, and Solidariti talks about interactive maps made easier.
- MySpace Plans Virtual Presidential Primary. My man Monty should be a shoe-in.
– cpd
April 10th, 2007
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Catching up on the world of politics after a brief break has been quite informative — when you’re out of the current for a few days, you can get a really good look at the whole river. What jumped out at me today was a bunch of smaller stories — ones that give us a hole-in-the-gym-shower-wall glimpse of some of the changes the political world is enduring.
The first thing? A simple email caught by the Hotline in which John McCain asks his supporters to watch an Iraq speech to be broadcast live on his website. Next, another Hotline item about a (pitifully weak) RNC blast email sent to reporters and intended to paint Barak Obama as a fabricator (ah, sweet lies, the very breath of politics). Finally, the LA Times (via Political Wire) reports on controversy surrounding a “back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, [and] designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes.” (Hmmm, too bad it also led them to maybe break laws about government transparency…oopsie!)
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April 10th, 2007
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Hey kids, I’m finally recovered from the N-Ten conference last week — thanks to everyone who came to the social media panel Michael Silberman and I put on. It was a hoot and a half, despite the lack of audio, and people definitely came armed with good questions. Thanks especially to Riché Zamor, whose provision of a laptop and a working wireless connection saved our asses, seeing as the hotel wifi was down and our presentations were entirely online….
Lots of interesting stuff happened while I was checked out, so let’s get down to bidness. First off, Joe Biden seems to be trying to be the video candidate par excellence, at least judging from a couple of interesting moves he made last week. First, as Steve Rubel and others have noted, he was the first candidate to prepare a video reply to a video question asked via Jeff Jarvis’s PrezVid site. An actual online conversation between a candidate and a voter! Why should candidates talk directly to the public like this? As original questioner JD Lasica put it on his own site:
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April 10th, 2007
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One quick morsel for you guys before I head back to N-Ten: this morning, NPR interviewed Matthew Gross, the guy who ran Howard Dean’s online campaign in ’04 and who’s now in charge of John Edwards’ Internet strategy. Some highlights: the ability of the web to go into great detail about issues and to show a candidate’s personal side, the rise of online fundraising and the small donor, the potential of online video and social networking sites to connect with voters, and the Edwards blogger micro-scandal. One interesting point: he seems well aware of campaigns’ loss of the ability to control a political message in the age of citizen-generated content. Give it a listen.
– cpd
April 6th, 2007
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April 5th, 2007
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Hey kids, I’m at the N-Ten Nonprofit Technology Conference through Friday. In the meantime, don’t miss me TOO much. And if you’re at the conference, come by the social media panel I’m moderating on Thursday — it should be a hoot.
– cpd
April 4th, 2007
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Mike Connery wrote an article last week for Future Majority (cross-posted on MyDD) that raises some interesting points about the potential of online video to reach niche audiences:
“Cable [tv] buys are smart not just because they are cheap, but because they are targeted and can help you increase the effectiveness of an ad buy. This theory applies even more so to viral video, which will rise from within and appeal to certain online and offline niche communities…So when the next smash viral hit of the cycle emerges, don’t forget that there were a few hundred others that didn’t get noticed, but may have just as much — if not more — of an impact on our democracy and our politics.”
His discussion of the potential of online video to supplement or replace traditional tv advertising really got me thinking about one of the significant traits of Internet video — that watching it is a voluntary act.
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April 2nd, 2007
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