Archive: Year: 2009

A new online video released yesterday by liberal online behemoth MoveOn.org has hit a nerve. Starring comedian Will Ferrell and a host of A-list Hollywood actors, the video has already been 1.5 million times in less than 24 hours. Ilyse Hogue, the group's director of political advocacy and communication, tells me that it is "by far our best performing [video] through social networks." She reports that nearly 250,000 of those views have come from people clicking through links that supporters of MoveOn have placed on their Facebook pages, and another 36,000 or so from Twitter referrers. Not bad. Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell Personally, I found the video a bit too sarcastic and dark to convince people who aren't already...

Wondering which Members of Congress have clout? Not the kind that gets legislation passed or stopped, but the kind that turns heads online? Well, with the help of our friends at Klout.com, we've taken a look at 81 Members of Congress who have been active Twitter users over the last year, and the results may surprise you. Right now, according to Klout's analysis, which weighs 25 different variables in assigning a score to a Twitter user, no Member of Congress has more Klout than none other than Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina. His score: 79.0 out of 100. According to the site, that makes him a "persona" on Twitter: "You have built a personal brand around your identity. There is...

A friend responded to my post about Barack Obama's sagging YouTube statistics by noting that since the election, a lot of Obama's video viewers may have migrated over to his official White House YouTube channel. Fair point. But a close look at their metrics doesn't change my main point, that the White House isn't making very good use of online video and as a result is not connecting very well online. Here's the overall track of the White House YouTube channel, as tracked by TubeMogul: ...

If you chart the daily viewership of Barack Obama's official channel on YouTube, you might conclude that being President of the United States is the kiss of death for online enthusiasm. Here's TubeMogul's full chart from January 20 to present, which you have to scroll through using the slider at the bottom to get the full picture. TubeMogul breaks down all the sources of these daily totals, and the internal numbers show something even worse for Obama's...

In Australia, PdF friend Mark Pesce reports, there's been a fascinating confrontation between "ANONYMOUS" and the government over the issue of internet censorship. A week ago, hackers temporarily brought down the Prime Minister's website, along with that of the Australian Communications and Media Authority. They were apparently riled up over pending proposals by the government and its Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, to introduce the mandatory filtering of the internet by all websites in Australia. Here's a snippet of their manifesto: Hello, Kevin Rudd. We are Anonymous. We have been watching you. It wasn't very long ago since you were elected, was it? The media hype surrounding your future government back in 2007 was incredible. Many of us Australians saw both you and...

Building on Nancy's post Wednesday about the interesting relationship (correlation is probably overstating the case) between the number of social media followers (Twitter + Facebook) tallied by some of the candidates running for various New York City offices and their showing in Tuesday's primary, I thought it might be interesting to ask Joe Fernandez, the founder of Klout, a start-up that analyzes people's Twitter profiles, to take a look at the two candidates in the run-off for the Public Advocate's office, Mark Green and Bill DeBlasio, and tell us who might be making better use of the platform. As Nancy noted, DeBlasio edged past Green Tuesday, surprising many observers who expected the better-known Green (who was Public Advocate a decade...

Got some spare time? Don't want to waste it playing Solitaire and instead put it to better use? If you're reading this blog post on an iPhone, or have one, stop right now and go download the Extraordinaries new app, "Be Extra." Or, check out this new (and very beta) web interface, which offers the same user experience (and will eventually be available as a customizable widget that can highlight specific groups). Either way, it's time to pay some fresh attention to this terrific project, which wowed me when I first heard about it (and led us to get Ben Rigby, one of the Extraordinaries three co-founders, to write a guest blog post for us back in February explaining the...

Bill Cosby has taken to Twitter, whre he has nearly 375,000 followers, and Facebook to join the growing national debate over health care reform, and specifically the degree to which racial animosity is driving opposition to President Obama. Interestingly, and to his credit, he isn't just using those platforms to broadcast his views; he's specifically pointing people to the discussion section of his Facebook page, where a respectful and wide-ranging debate is underway. Now, eat your jello pudding!...

PdF friend Seth Godin has a great post up today, which he calls "The Problem With Non." It's a cri-de-couer aimed at the people who create and run non-profit organizations, especially those who imagine that they are about making change: The problem facing your group, ironically, is the resistance to the very thing you are setting out to do. Non-profits, in my experience, abhor change. Take a look at the top 100 twitter users in terms of followers. Remember, this is a free tool, one that people use to focus attention and galvanize action. What? None of them are non-profits. Not one as far as I can tell. Is the work you're doing not important enough to follow, or is it (and...

It's Primary Day here in New York state, as well as various cities around the country, and while turnout is expected to be low (just 15% in NYC), we're going to keep our eyes on ways that candidates and/or activists are using social media to get out the vote. Here's a look at how the words "vote," "voted" and "vote today" are trending on Twitter, for starters. Various candidates are using their Twitter feeds to remind people to vote, including Democrats Bill Thompson, who is vying to be the Democratic nominee for Mayor; (715 followers) Public Advocate candidates Norman Siegel (476 followers), who released a letter to voters about his candidacy; and Mark Green (231 followers), who has been tweeting out 100...