Posts filed under 'Social Networking'

Doing It for the Cheerleaders: The Explosive Growth of Niche Social Networks

An unusual email drifted over the transom today:

Please help me and my sister grow our site, My name is Madison and my sister is Morgan we are all star cheerleaders and we asked are dad to start us a web site like Myspace but for cheerleaders and dancers. The site is called Wegatta.com we are hoping that we can make this the biggest web site for cheerleaders and dancers, we started the web site in December and it is doing ok so far, we have about 1689 members mostly cheerleaders.

Can you please help us get the word out about are site? And anyone can join. Wegatta.com is very cool and fun my dad put over 750 games on Wegatta.com for everyone to play and it’s all free.

(more…)

Add comment May 15th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

E.politics is Now on Twitter

Resistance is futile: e.politics has surrendered to the Twitter Borg. Now you’ll be able to find out what our staff (i.e., the cat and the turtle) have for breakfast every single day! Farewell, productive time…

Seriously, I’m experimenting with Twitter to get general impressions and a better feel for it as a communications channel. At the moment, I’ll mostly be sending out notifications of new e.pol articles via Twitterfeed, but let’s see what the future brings.

cpd

Add comment May 12th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Viral Coefficients And Political Freedom in Lebanon: Terrific Responses to Yesterday’s Facebook Story

Yesterday’s Facebook article generated some fantastic comments both here and on the techPresident version, with plenty of things to chew on for a while, and you guys are crazy if you miss out on them. So, let’s gather ‘em up in one easy bundle and take ‘em on home.

First, Mark Rovner from Sea Change Strategies weighed in here on e.politics in typically vivid style:

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3 comments May 5th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Has Facebook Jumped the Shark as a Political Tool?

Cross-posted on techPresident

I hate to risk alienating my new BFF Mark Zuckerberg, but has Facebook’s moment in the sun as a hot political tool passed? And if so, what does that tell us about the future of social networking sites for online political organizing, and even about the future of Facebook itself?

We’ve now seen more than a year of intense use of social networking sites by the U.S. presidential campaigns (and even longer use by issue-advocacy groups), which gives us a solid base of information and experience to judge just how effective Facebook is as a political tool — both for organized political campaigns and advocacy groups and for individual political activists. The verdict? Facebook has not lived up to a lot of its initial political hype, and for reasons that are perfectly natural considering what kind of a site it is. The crux:

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7 comments May 4th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Quick Hits — April 28, 2008

cpd

Add comment April 28th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Obama Supporters Using Wiki to Reach Superdelegates, Text Messages to Reach Your Momma

Cross-posted on techPresident

As the Democratic primary process grinds on, the candidates’ supporters are using just about every electronic tool available to swing the race their way. Two cases in point from the Obama side: super.del.egates.us is a wiki-based contact list for voters to use to reach the precious unpledged delegates to the Democratic Convention, while Yrmomma4obama aims to help young voters (and those too young to vote themselves) to use text messages to persuade their friends and family to jump on the Obama bandwagon.

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Add comment April 27th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Quick Hits — April 24, 2008

cpd

Add comment April 24th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Campaign Internet Staffers are Expected to Know Everything — and Still Live in a Box

In her presentation this morning, Morra Aarons-Mele made an excellent observation: internet staffers for political campaigns are expected to do everything and to know everything. The same is true in the advocacy world: when I was at the former National Environmental Trust, at various times I was a graphic designer, an HTML coder, an online communications strategist, an email advocacy guy, a database manager, a blog outreacher, a site statistics analyst, a social networking pro, an online advertiser and a trainer of interns — sometimes all in the same day. About the only things I didn’t do were to blog for the organization and to raise money online, and that was only because NET didn’t do those things.

Web staffers are expected to have a broader range of skills than any other part of a campaign or organization (example: do you expect your press relations folks to be fundraising experts?), and yet they’re still often underpaid and kept out of critical communications decisions until late in the process. Bizarre. Oh, and BTW, I can’t fix your computer — it amazed me how often people confused my job with that of our actual (and excellent) IT guy.

I can only assume that this situation exists because the ‘net seems like voodoo to traditional political staff, who often seem to have little idea what actually goes into online communications. As the ‘net insinuates itself more and more into politics at all levels, a change had better come — as Zack Exley put it, you won’t hire an internet person and put him or her in a box, you’ll hire communications staff who actually understand how to use the internet.

cpd

1 comment April 24th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Notes for Knight Digital Media Center Presentation on Congressional and Local Campaigning

Along with Dennis Johnson, Karen Jagoda and Morra Aarons-Mele, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation this morning on congressional and local online campaigns for the assembled journalists at the Knight Digital Media Center’s symposium, Election ’08: Unleashing the Cyber-watchdogs (i.e., after a week of luxuriating in the California sun, it was time to sing for my supper and justify the trip). My notes are below; if they’re too cryptic, drop me a note for details.

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Add comment April 24th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Social Media Marketing Cheat Sheet

Hi y’all, I gave a social media marketing training in New York on Monday, and I developed something for it that you might be able to use. The training was for the web staff of the local chapters of a large national nonprofit, and we covered the basics of using tools like blogs, online video, social networking sites and email lists and discussion groups to promote their activities and help with membership and fundraising. As a takeaway (a trick I learned from Michael Bassik — if you can, leave a little something behind for the crowd), I created a cheap sheet that looks at the basic social media marketing tools, their pros and cons, and the essential considerations involved in a social media campaign. Here’s a link to the PDF; details are below.

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1 comment April 4th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Resources for NTC Panel, E-Advocacy: Mission over Membership

Greetings from New Orleans and the Nonprofit Technology Conference, where e.politics is bearing up nobly under the strain of going to fantastic cities and hanging out with bright and interesting people. Rough life, I know

As a takeaway for the participants in our online advocacy panel on Friday, below are a ton of articles on various aspects of the question of spreading a message and working to change politics and policy online.

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2 comments March 20th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Quick Hits — March 6, 2008

Post-Politics Online/pre-SXSW Quick Hits extravaganza.

cpd

Add comment March 6th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Quick Hits — February 25, 2008

cpd

Add comment February 25th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Facebook Status Echoes Australian Apology

Check out Priscilla Bryce-Weller’s comment on the Facebook status/advocacy piece from a few days ago:

We did this in Australia last week. Our parliament apologised on behalf of previous governments to Australia’s Indigenous Stolen Generations. We suggested to both our Facebook and MySpace friends that they change their status to “is sorry” on the day of the apology. Lots of people did, and as an added extra, hundreds of people joined our cause that day.

Excellent way to get an issue out in the public eye, and obviously in this case it benefited the folks encouraging people to do it. On the same article, also check out Briton Mark Pack’s comment on Facebook’s use in UK elections:

Using status in this way is a pretty common campaigning technique in the UK, though what’s become more popular here (at least in the Liberal Democrats) is changing your profile picture to a graphic that says you are backing / have voted for a particular candidate.

Also clever — clearly, this is a promising tool to help activists spread political messages. Facebook users are bombarded by tons of messages and group invitations, but even when they tune those out, they’ll still see their friends’ status and picture.

cpd

Add comment February 22nd, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Quick Hits — February 20, 2008

cpd

Add comment February 20th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Quick Hits — February 15, 2008

cpd

Add comment February 15th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

Quick Hits — February 12, 2008

Potomac Primary special edition — special because for once, DC’s vote actually matters.

cpd

Add comment February 12th, 2008 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us

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