e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Archive for May 2nd, 2007

Quick Hits — May 2, 2007

Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death. The end of milblogging? Just as YouTube lines up to be the next threat to military discipline. But wait! There’s more…U.S. Military Uses YouTube to Get Its Story Out (nice outflanking maneuver, guys).
Hillary “1984″ ad creator gets a new job. Shocker — he’ll be doing campaign video.
News Media Shell More Out for Ad Keywords. News outlets are bidding up terms hot in the zeitgeist.
Referendum: The 2006 Midterm Congressional Elections. An academic’s look at the dynamics of the last election cycle (via the Moving Ideas newsletter).
How Blogs Blow Things Out Of Proportion. WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Capitol Hill’s Constituent E-mail Culture and Future. An echo of the great email deliverability debate.
Jerome Armstrong rounds up the Democratic candidates’ outreach efforts toward the netroots. Turns out, not so impressive (via TechPresident).
Kung Fu Quip’s Matt Turk calls for open public access to debate video, is jujitsu-d by conservative colleagues.
Use Email & Postal Mail to Create a Really Powerful One-Two Punch. Integration is a virtue.
Best Practices: Power Up Your [Advocacy] Campaign. From M&R Strategic Services [PDF].
Chinese journalists-for-hire use web to bypass media filters and expose corruption. Have travel reimbursement, will travel.
Social networking spreads to cell phones. Is your phone trolling for dates behind your back? (via Micropersuasion).
Digg Gets Dose of Social Media In Action. Site users revolt over removal of copy-protection-cracking code; discussion quickly goes nuclear. TechCrunch has more.
Cutting-and-running to QubeTV is not a viable answer for conservatives. Their own sandbox just isn’t big enough.
One Hit Too Many: New site for eHarmony rejects. Designed for people who are “gay, ‘unhealthy’ or even just obstreperous” — you guys should fit right in.

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Your Site Visitors Just Want You to be Easy

An article posted yesterday in Micropersuasion has caught my eye — Google and other homepage/portal providers are desperate to get users to customize their personal pages (which Google just renamed “iGoogle”), yet most users are really just interested in getting to information quickly. In the article, Steve Rubel cites a Forrester Research study from a year or two ago, in which respondents clearly indicated what they want: they top three responses were “Direct paths to content I am looking for,” “Ads that don’t interfere” and “Proper labeling of menu items.” Basically, people want easy navigation and a clear route to content. Customization? Pre-filtering of content or advertising for relevance? Low, low, low on the list.

Now, those numbers are getting a little old (third quarter of 2005), but I doubt that user expectations have changed THAT much in a year-and-a-half. When you’re looking at your own site(s), remember that the main thing your visitors want is simply to be able to find things easily. Steve talks about the need for tiered systems to allow extensive customization for power users while keeping things straightforward for everyone else, but except for the big boys, most of us would be best sticking to simplicity. More on best practices for advocacy/campaign websites.

– cpd

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Ugly Scene Follows Obama Takeover of Volunteer-Run MySpace Site

[Update: More media coverage and some Obama damage control below.]

Micah Sifry posted a fascinating analysis last night of the Obama campaign’s takeover of a formerly volunteer-run MySpace site for the candidate, complete with dueling accusations and a lot of ill will all around. More than two years ago, Barak fan Joe Anthony started a MySpace page in honor of the then-Senator, only to see its friend list balloon to over 160,000 in the frenzy of attention paid to the presidential race over the past few months. Understandably, Obama’s campaign staff became uncomfortable with such a valuable asset being controlled by a volunteer and decided to take it over. Unfortunately, from there things went to hell quickly, leaving the campaign with egg on its face and Anthony labeled (unfairly, to my eyes) a cyber-squatter and money-grubber.

As Micah points out, this exact situation probably won’t play out again, since high-profile campaigns will start their own official MySpace pages and preempt amateurs in the future. But, it says a lot about the power of random political supporters (and by extension, opponents) to build up networks of excited people outside of a campaign’s direct control. As citizen-created media become more common in the political world, questions of direction, power and control will crop up more and more — campaigns are not used to letting other people shape their messages, and more feelings are likely to get bruised in the future. Balancing message discipline and real citizen involvement in politics is going to be a problem for traditionally-minded campaign operatives.

Update — More coverage online: