Archive: Year: 2007

Google the words “DailyKos” and you’ll get about 2.6 million results. Google the words “Democracy Alliance” and you’ll get about 44,000 hits, and from them you won’t find out much. You’ll learn that the DA is a partnership of some 80 to 100 wealthy liberals, who have each pledged to contribute $1 million or more over several years to fund think tanks and advocacy groups, inspired by the hundreds of millions that a handful of rich conservatives spent in the 1970s and 1980s building the infrastructure of the New Right. You’ll learn the names of some of its biggest supporters, like George Soros, Peter Lewis and, indirectly, Herb and Marion Sandler. If you go to the group’s modest website, you...

It looks like only one presidential candidate understood the value of OneWebDay: John Edwards. (Here's my original post on the topic.) That's not really a surprise, given how well-stocked his campaign is with veterans of the Howard Dean campaign, the contribution of policy advisers like David Weinberger with a deep understanding of the web, and Elizabeth Edwards' longstanding involvement online. Here's his statement: "As avid users of the Internet, Elizabeth and I are proud to salute OneWebDay 2007. "Thanks to the Web, millions of people around the world have the opportunity to effect change and make profound differences for good in their communities. "That is why it is vital that we overcome the digital divide which prevents many of our rural and African-American...

Given how much the presidential campaigns are relying on the internet to get their message out, raise money and rally supporters, I wonder if any of them are planning to mark OneWebDay this Saturday. As Susan Crawford, the founder of OneWebDay, puts it: It’s easy to take the web for granted. But it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what the web could mean to humankind in the future. That’s the purpose of OneWebDay, held each September 22. There are substantial threats to the free flow of information online, all over the world. Many governments censor online content. (see opennet.net). Many people in developing nations can’t get online at all. We need to ensure that the internet used by future...

Cell phone service is coming to New York City's subway system, which is good news, so the guy pictured below on the front page of the Daily News' website won't have to use an aluminum can with a wire attached to it so he can get an emergency message out to the streets above...

Here's the top half of my and Andrew Rasiej's latest "Politics 2.0" column in The Politico: We could be wrong, but here’s a prediction about the power of viral campaigns: By the time the dust settles on the storm kicked up by MoveOn.org’s highly provocative “Petraeus/Betray Us” ad in The New York Times on Sept. 10, the online group will have seen its 3.2-million-strong e-mail membership list grow substantially. That’s because MoveOn understands the way messages move in our new Internet-driven media environment. It’s not enough to make a speech or issue a press release or buy a newspaper ad. Nor does it matter if you have a great press list, or ins with all the top political bloggers on the planet...

Do Americans for whom Spanish is their primary language talk about politics online anywhere? I'm far from an expert on this, and I'd love some community feedback. But as best as I can tell, the answer is no. I've been surfing around this morning, looking for reactions to the Univision Democratic debate, which took place last night in Miami and which was broadcast in Spanish, with English subtitles. (Though, oddly, the rules of the debate prevented the candidates from speaking directly in Spanish, something both Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd tried to ignore.) First place I looked was on Technorati. Bloggers definitely perked up around the debate, with mentions of the word "Univision" jumping from about 40 or so per day...

Seth Godin credits me, I think (how many other Micahs does he know?), for sending him a link to news report about a JupiterResearch study that found that most viral campaigns fail because they only work 15% of the time. Umm, , I didn't send him that link, but his post prompts me to add my two cents and a link to another piece, by Duncan Watts and Jonah Peretti, on the Harvard Business Review's site. First cent: I agree with Seth, you can't market something virally in the sense of getting people to share something by word-of-mouth/email/blog that they're not inherently into. The Jupiter study notes that most marketers aim their campaigns at influentials as if those people can somehow,...

Looking to build a "people's movement"? Like to hang with "fellow travelers"? Or are you a campaign field organizer looking for an easy-to-use online tool to help supporters and volunteers share car rides to events? Then check out GoLoco.org, a new service from the people who brought you the ZipCar. The idea, says Robin Chase, GoLoco's CEO, is to help people quickly share rides between friends, neighbors, and co-workers, as well as facilitate sharing costs online. She describes the service as "Facebook meets the Rideboard, with paypal thrown in." Here are some of the things you can do with GoLoco: * organizers can create an event and invite others to it * you can group all...

It's been about a week since Mitt Romney's campaign launched the most interactive experiment of any we've seen come from the Republican side of the presidential field, calling on their supporters to submit 30- or 60-second TV ads, mashing up a rich array of clips, audio and photos provided by the campaign. It's a smart way for the campaign to engage grass-roots supporters, and to also erase any memories people may have of Romney's reluctance to participate in the Republican YouTube debate. And, as a number of observers predicted, it's also a bit of a double-edged sword. So far, nearly 600 people have jumped in, using Yahoo's Jumpcut video editing platform to create and/or comment on some 76 submissions. The experiment also...

In the wake of Senator Larry Craig's sudden departure from Congress, don't miss Jose Antonio Vargas's lengthy profile of Mike Rogers, the blogger who has made it his crusade to out closeted politicians who are anti-gay. It's fascinating to learn about how Rogers got going: The way Rogers tells it, his online activism began when the Republican-controlled Senate scheduled a vote against same-sex marriage in June 2004. The birth of the Internet has been a boon for gay socializing and organizing, and one of the first things Rogers did was post a profile on Gay.com, a popular site among gays. The profile read: "If you're against the Federal Marriage Amendment and know someone who's closeted, send that information to me." And while...