Archive: Year: 2008

Barack Obama's promise to announce his VP pick by text-message -- a smart and obvious ploy to sign up mobile users for future campaign communications -- has been getting a lot of attention this past week, not just from us, but also in a smart op-ed by our friend Garrett Graff in the New York Times, and also today in a (rare for him) catch-up story by the Times' Brian Stelter. What I hadn't noticed in all this coverage was a quiet but probably more important development: The Obama campaign just rolled out its new mobile platform, m.barackobama.com, which is expressly designed to work on most mobile phones that have internet access. Scott Goodstein, the Obama team's mobile guru, has...

"The One," the McCain campaign's YouTube video poking at Oprah Winfrey's reference to Barack Obama's supposed chosenness, recently topped 1 million views (making it McCain's second most viral video). You may think the ad is just needling Obama (and his fans) for some of their more chest-thumping moments (i.e. "we are the ones we have been waiting for), and the general reaction to it from the political pundits was that the ad was amusing, that mocking Obama for being messianic was a bit tough but that mostly this was evidence of the McCain campaign starting to take the gloves off. Next story, please. Well, maybe it's worth another look. The Matthew 25 movement--a group of progressive evangelicals that runs a...

It's been a while since I've checked in on our charts tracking how the campaigns are doing on the web, and even though we're now firmly headed into the August doldrums before the national conventions, some interesting trends are worth noting. * Obama continues to dominate the online social network arena, gaining another 125,000 friends on Facebook in the last month. * In terms of site traffic, it looks like July was McCain's best month ever. Hitwise shows him peaking at nearly 30% of all web traffic (with Obama taking the rest); Compete's data shows a similar boost for the Arizona Senator. Keep in mind that while his share is up, the overall amount of visits presidential campaign sites is way...

This morning, the Commission on Presidential Debates and MySpace are announcing "MyDebates.org,," a "landmark partnership" that they claim "will do for the debates what TV did in 1960 for the Nixon Kennedy election." Their joint press release says this new site "will offer a host of interactive tools for viewers to virally engage in the political process." The release notes that "marks the first time that the CPD has paired with an Internet property to include online functionality into the event series and traditional debate format." Unfortunately, the CPD's landmark is little more than a shack. At best.This morning, the Commission on Presidential Debates and MySpace are announcing "MyDebates.org,," a "landmark partnership" that they claim "will do for the debates...

I'm in Austin, Texas for the Netroots Nation conference today and tomorrow, and will try to do some live video interviews as I bump into people and post them here. I'm speaking tomorrow on a panel on "Transparency, Participation and Reinvention in Government in the Next Administration Through Web 2.0 Tools and Culture," which I think could have had the shorter title of "Rebooting Government in 2009" but you get the drift. I'm looking forward to meeting and talking with my fellow panelists, Justin Hamilton, Silona Bonewald, Andrew Hoppin, W. David Stephenson, and Jeanne Holm. Andrew and Jeanne are both with NASA, so hopefully they've brought some good schwag, like a miniature Saturn rocket or something. Ping me via Twitter...

We've posted another chunk of video of plenary sessions from "Personal Democracy Forum 2008: Rebooting the System" on our Blip.tv channel at pdf.blip.tv. You can watch: * Clay Shirky on Politics As If Everybody Can Participate. * Zephyr Teachout on The Internet's Still Unfinished Potential. * Douglas Rushkoff on The New Renaissance. * Van Jones on How Social Technology Can Help Solve Global Problems. * Steven Clift on The Power of Information to Transform Government. * Redefining Leadership in a Networked Age, with Brian Behlendorf, Scott Heiferman, Gina Cooper and Craig Newmark. Collect them, trade them with your friends, get the whole set!...

The online mini-rising to protest Barack Obama's support for the Congressional compromise to renew the FISA legislation has been getting a lot of attention, with much being made (by us and plenty of others, including Ari Melber in the Nation, The New York Times, et al) that activists are using Obama's own social networking platform, my.BarackObama.com, to organize and channel their efforts to get him to alter his stand. Indeed, as of today the Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right group has swelled to more than 14,000 members, which makes it the single largest self-organized group on the whole platform, which reportedly has close to a million registered members. This is certainly a good...

Our cousins across the pond continue to show that "government 2.0" isn't just something that we have to do "to" government, but it's something government can do "with" us. The Power of Information Task Force has just launched a contest called "Show Us a Better Way" that is calling for "ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated." They've put up 20,000 pounds for the winning idea, which is something like a gazillion dollars (these days). This is really kewl. To make the contest really productive, the taskforce has brought together a wealth of government data-sets and useful APIs, including several previously unavailable treasure-troves, including neighborhood statistics (covering such things as access to services, community wellbeing/social...

The first videos of plenary sessions from "Personal Democracy Forum 2008: Rebooting the System" are now available on our Blip.tv channel at pdf.blip.tv. * A Conversation with Elizabeth (and John) Edwards, led by Andrew Rasiej. * Lawrence Lessig on The Declaration for Independence. * Jonathan Zittrain on The Future of the Internet: Towards Civic Technologies. * Mark Pesce on What Happens When We're All Connected: Hyperpolitics (American Style). Relive your favorite moments; catch a session you may have missed; share them with your friends! We'll have more for you soon...

Every few years, network theorist Valdis Krebs creates a fascinating map of the relationships among the top political books currently selling on Amazon. In past years, he notes, "we saw a divided nation in our book buying data. We saw then a distinct red cluster and a distinct blue cluster with very little holding them together in terms of cross-links or books in common." But now, he's found something different going on. First, there are a lot more books in the middle, "purple" zone--meaning that they were of interest to book-buyers on the left and right. And second, a number of "old conservative" writers like George Will and Patrick Buchanan were positioned closer to the progressive audience than they were to...