Archive: Year: 2012

There's nothing like the ingenuity of mobile app developers, apparently. This just in: In response to my story Monday suggesting that edits on the Wikipedia pages of potential Republican vice presidential candidates could be a tip-off to Mitt Romney's pending announcement, a Silicon Valley engineer and author named Martin Ford has built "Romney VP Predictor," an Android app that automatically checks the Wikipedia pages for Mitt Romney's leading vice presidential candidates and then tabulates the number of recent edits to the pages. While Wikipedia is still limiting access to those pages to registered users, Jennifer Lee, an associate for Ford's, says, "The Romney campaign will almost certainly have access to people with editing privileges, and it seems very likely that the...

The act of observing something can sometimes change the thing being observed. Case in point: my observation on Monday that we might be able to get useful clues as to the identity of Mitt Romney's vice president pick by watching for a surge of edits on their Wikipedia page. Not any more. Last night, Stephen Colbert played a snippet of a Fox News report noting the jump in last-minute edits to Sarah Palin's page four years ago, and then he went to town. Assuming that Wikipedia edits were the tip-off, he declared, "We could be looking at Vice President Season Six of Buffy-the-Vampire Slayer. So, Nation, let your voice be heard in this history decision. Go on Wikipedia, and make...

Two weeks ago, the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania released a national survey on public attitudes towards targeted political advertising, and the results were unequivocal. 86% of Americans say they do not want "political advertising tailored to your interests." Somewhat smaller majorities also said they don't want ads for products and services (61%) or news (56%) tailored to their interests. 85% agreed "If I found out that Facebook was sending me ads for political candidates based on my profile information that I had set to private, I would be angry.” More than 3/4 said they wouldn't return to a website if they knew if was sharing information about them with political advertisers. 70% say they would be less likely to...

The Romney campaign wants you to download its mobile app to be among the first to find out who Mitt is going to pick as his running mate, but if past history is any guide, you might want to instead be looking at Wikipedia — and whether any of the leading contenders' entries are being suddenly brushed up. Sarah Palin's Wikipedia page was updated at least 68 times the day before John McCain announced her selection, with another 54 changes made in the five previous days previous. Tim Pawlenty, another leading contender for McCain's favor, had 54 edits on August 28th, with just 12 in the five previous days. By contrast, the other likely picks — Romney, Kay Bailey Hutchison —...

Today, Twitter announced the launch of the "Twitter Political Index" in partnership with the social data analysis firm Topsy and pollsters The Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research, and the twittering class swooned. "Ignore the 'Twindex' at your peril," stomped Chris Cilizza of The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog. "This is a big deal: Twitter just launched a very powerful new political sentiment tool," tweeted Ben Smith, the editor of BuzzFeed. "Twitter Will Gauge Voter Sentiment in New Venture" was the headline at National Journal--never mind the fact that this is neither a measure of voters or of sentiment. Rather, what the Twindex number for Obama or Romney purports to be is a ranking of where attitudes expressed about those...

Celebrate Barack's birthday at our home SO COOL Gray hairs Do just one thing A family photo with the President You'll need to comb your hair for this Warning: This picture is cute Trust me -- you'll have fun We'll fly you in for the President's birthday Get-together in my backyard Hey The girls and I have a tradition Barack's a good sport Sign Barack's card --B.H. Obama Mitt's VP Inspired by my grandfather Saturday Only! My VP "You didn't build that" Meet America's Comeback Team Sign up and get a coupon Meet Mitt and his running mate Meet America's Comeback Team My dad's VP We Did Build This The context is even worst that the quote itself Built By Us --W.M. Romney [All genuine email subject lines from each campaign since July 12}...

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's PDPlus teleconference with Andrew Slack, the founder of the Harry Potter Alliance--not because I'm a fan of the books, but because I'm intrigued to learn more about how you can convert fans into activists, and how the web makes that easier. We live in a world driven and distracted by pop culture, and while that may mean lots of brands spend lots of time trying to convert their consumers into their promoters, fans of various icons, books and movies are also creating their own autonomous spaces that can have political value. The read-write web, of course, as Henry Jenkins most memorably argued in his writings on Participatory Culture, makes this process of fan-driven expression and...

Most days, we here at techPresident take little more than a glance at the steady stream of PR pitches that flow into our in-boxes as most of them aren't all that interesting. But you never know; there's a lot of innovative people working at the intersection of tech and politics, so we read them all and follow up when appropriate. But today we got word of a new pitch that, perhaps deliberately, wasn't sent our way. Alas, a friend brought it to our attention, and now you too get to see just how silly some political consulting firms can get when they're trying to position themselves as go-to shops for digital savvy. The pitch yesterday from SKDKnickerbocker, a big Democratic firm,...

Hey This is important Also Help Excuse me I want to buy you a cup of coffee Drop what you're doing Urgent A big problem right now Scary We could lose if this continues I will be outspent --B.H. Obama Answer this call From the road Make it count The promise gap You never know Let's take a moment Deadline reminder Less than 24 hours left Deadline reminder Sign up and get a coupon --W.M. Romney [All genuine email subject lines from June 28 to present.]...

"This election may be remembered as the Bitter Twitter campaign," former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon said recently. With both campaigns avoiding offering any big new ideas, he predicted that "we are likely to see the next [few] months as a furious and relentless exchange of messages that aren't much longer or deeper than 140 characters." Is that all that can be said about the daily Twitter wars between the Romney and Obama camps? To get a bigger picture — or rather, as you will see below, to get several bigger pictures — I turned to Marc A. Smith, chief social scientist with the Connected Action consulting group, who has long studied computer-mediated collective interaction. For the last few years, he and...