Quick Hits — March 2, 2010

All the online politics news that’s fit to link to.

• MoveOn backing challenger to Sen. Blanche Lincoln. C.f. A local take on the race.
• Searching for Saddam: A five-part series on how the U.S. military used social networking to capture the Iraqi dictator.
• The Making of the Tea Party Movement. Note digital angle — leveraging offline events for online benefit.
• Auto-tune meets Texas primary, via Brian Devine.
• Facebook Overtakes Yahoo: Now the Second Most Visited Site in U.S. C.f. Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year.
• Facebook’s Capitol Presence.
• Lampooning Candidates in Iraq. Satire lives!
• Social media and young adults. (Upshot: more MySpace than their elders).
• An analysis of mobile advocacy and mobile fundraising metrics for nonprofit organizations — the first benchmarking study of its kind. C.f. Using Social Media to Meet Nonprofit Goals: The Results of a Survey.
• Health Reform: An Online Guide. Links to the president’s new proposal and to anything else you might conceivably want to know about health care reform. C.f. 100,000 Unique Live Readers Made 100,000 Comments During Health Care Summit on CoverItLive Platforms, as Internet Drives Huge Traffic to White House Health Care Summit. Then, After the Summit: In YouTube Experiment, Hill Leaders Field the Same Five Questions and The Best Tweets from the Health-Care Summit: Part II But wait, there’s more! MoveOn.org Virtual Protest Has Congress Scrambling, as Health Reformers Gather For “Virtual March” on DC.
• Visualize Data to Win Political Debates.
• Andrew Breitbart is not a fan of Salon.
• Ann Coulter’s blue humor at CPAC. Redd Foxx has nothin’ on her.
• Young, Conservative, and Bombastic: Jason Mattera makes the most of his moment in the spotlight. CPAC + internet = 15 minutes
• Military Announces New Social Media Policy, and DoD Leading the Way With Social Media. Plus, Apps for the Army: like AppsForDemocracy, helping fix gov’t.
• Drone operators climb on winds of change in the Air Force. C.f. Israel’s new long-range surveillance drone, Pentagon evaluates robot “mule” and Army and Marines look at unmanned helicopters to resupply remote units.
• Meet the Sims … and Shoot Them. The incredible spread of military training and recruitment games — including to Hezbollah.
• News gets personal, social, and participatory.
• What were Joe Stack’s politics?. Fight over blame for man who flew plane into IRS building began fast online. See also: “It’s counterintuitive, but joining certain groups can be more isolating than living alone,” plus Do Engineers = Terrorists?
• Did Twitter Topple Toyota? In the social-media age, Toyota’s crisis-management strategy never had a chance.
• Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet.
• In praise of (Righty) bloggers.
• Online Organization Tips.
• New application claims to be able to read the tone of Tweets.
• YouTube Broadcasts Tiger Woods Apology Live, Hinting at Future Moves.
• Democrats (via OFA) Target Independents in Colorado and Virginia.
• Palin’s Primaries. New DCCC site; dig the “hand-written” notes about major races. Via Politico.
• Water-Cooler Effect: Internet Can Be TV’s Friend.
• Fiorina Web Failures. We’re not the only ones paying attention.
• More Scrutiny Of Location Data Urged.
• Data Shows: “Twitter”-Centric Stories are Not Heavily Shared on Facebook.
• GOP spoofs health summit with ‘Blair Witch’ movie trailer.
• Which Enraged Scott Brown Facebook Fan Comment Is Your Favorite?, via Brian Devine.
• Three Web strategies every PR person should employ now.
• Local (DC) Blogger Fired For Her Blog.
• The Times’s new online 2010 election map.
• 5 Tips for Creating Non-Profit Online Communities (via Bivings), and Tips for Managing and Engaging Online Communities.
• Fundraising Drives Web Election Campaigns in U.S., But Not in U.K.
• USA.gov video contest.
• Nonprofit Website Effectiveness.
• The Five Elements of Viral Calls to Action.
• Absolute Beginners Guide to Media Monitoring.
• Facebook Fan Pages, Groups in Political Election Campaigns, 5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From, Facebook Fan Pages Now Showing in Google Search Results, and 13 Ways to Move Your Facebook Fans to Action, via Kerri Karvetski.
• HOW TO: Use Gmail and iGoogle To Create a Social Media Dashboard for Your Nonprofit.
• How to Generate Buzz via Social Media: Real Life Dos and Don’ts.
• Building websites for mobile phones.
• China Widens Net Censorship; Google Exile Looms.
• @MobWorld SPAMs Twitter at Expense of Unwitting Players.
• A guide to basic online campaign tools and activities.
• Haiti Quake Propels Use of Twitter as Disaster-Relief Tool.
• Why @JebBush Joining Twitter Matters.
• AP is Visionary: They See a “Siteless Web”.
• 5 Things Napoleon Can Teach You About Strategy.
• Bloggers Are Predominantly Male, College-Educated, Lazy. They left off “smelly, annoying.” C.f. Bloggers to the White House.
• RNC Email: We must be bipartisan, and also stop liberals because they suck serious ass.
• Woman using website, Twitter, to advertise is charged with prostitution in Parsippany. Social media, indeed.
• Put this in the “You can threaten to take down words but a YouTube video lives forever” file.
• Crossed Facebook Messages. File this one under “oopsie.”
• Political cybersquatting for fun and profit.
• 2010 Campaign Coverage Already Reaching Obsessive Levels. C.f. Prediction: 2010 Election $3.7 Billion.
• Facebook runs on dirty coal. Just say no!
• The Groundswell that Pulled Off Radio OFA. Equipping lefties for the talk radio playground.
• “Do Not Ask”: Lessig’s Plan to End Fundraising Emails.
• Swiftboating the Stimulus: Did the Internet Really Kill “Rovian” Politics?
• Pop Star Jesse McCartney Headlines Today’s “Healthy” Video Volunteers Homepage. C.f. Saluting the Best Nonprofit Videos of the Year.
• The Shooting War. An exclusive collection of work by the world’s most acclaimed conflict photographers.
• Air Force X-37B spaceplane arrives in Florida for launch. I can haz spaseship!

– cpd