Big day for technology rollouts! The Republican Party proudly released its new grassroots-engagement Facebook App today, which got coverage in a few outlets including the Christian Science Monitor, where I got a couple of solid quotes:
“At some level, what they’ve done is they’ve taken the same kind of tools that were in the MyBarackObama.com toolkit four years ago and posted them to Facebook,” says Colin Delany, the founder of Epolitics.com. “But at the same time, they will be able to leverage a certain amount of social data – what’s being shared, what’s being viewed – and there is a possibility that they’ll get a higher adoption rate because it’s within Facebook.”
…
“It’s good for engaging the loyalists and giving them something to do,” he says, but “not likely to make a huge difference in the outcome of the election.”
Yep, that about sums it up, though also note our friend Karen Jagoda’s excellent analysis in the same article. The tools are pretty standard (find volunteer opportunities, participate in a virtual phone bank, etc.), but they’re packaged up within the native Facebook environment so that people my be more inclined to use them. And while they were discussing the rollout with reporters, RNC folks touted the data they’ll have access to as people use the tools and share stories, plus the benefit of social sharing of people’s activity within the app across Facebook.
Useful no doubt, particularly in giving people outside of battleground states opportunities to get involved (one of the big advantages of MyBO, note), but a game-changer? Let’s see if the results match the hype.
– cpd
May 1st, 2012
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This just in:
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) and NGP VAN have partnered to bring state legislative candidates across the country DLCC Go, a unique suite of integrated and affordable new media, fundraising, and field campaign tools that will give Democratic campaigns of all sizes a competitive technology edge.
State legislative campaigns can take advantage of DLCC Go [www.DLCCGo.com] to easily publish a professional web site, send broadcast emails, manage fundraising online and off, and integrate their web site with the VAN field tool most Democratic campaigns use. From Maine to California, DLCC Go lets any state legislative campaign — big or small — take advantage of the best integrated campaign technology available to Democrats. The DLCC has made DLCC Go affordable by negotiating an economy of scale price with NGP VAN, a Democratic campaign technology company.
The democratization (with a small “d”) of campaign technology continues! State and local candidates already have access to CRMs like Salsa (on the Left) and NationBuilder (nonpartisan), and now we have this new development. DLCC had been working with Salsa to provide the DLCCWeb website/CRM package; I’m trying to find out if the NGP VAN product replaces it or supplements it, though judging from the description, I guess the answer is “replace.” Details to follow, as I get ‘em. Update: Apparently Salsa’s still in the mix. Cool.
Update II: I just got off the phone with NGP VAN CEO Stu Trevelyan and have a little more scoop. Their plan with this platform was to roll a lot of different technologies into a cohesive package so that campaigns can have an integrated system — as we’ve talked about before, it’s been too common for small campaigns in particular to have to cobble their online presence together piecemeal. Some highlights:
- Combines field and fundraising databases into one linked system
- Offers state legislative candidates the same tools/technology available on the national front
- Does NOT integrate with Salsa, the previous technology underlying last cycle’s DLCCWeb
Interesting! Also, potentially a big deal for a lot of small campaigns that haven’t been able to leverage the ‘net as effectively as they could, particularly for field organizing.
– cpd
May 1st, 2012
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