MyBO NOOO! Part 2: Yesterday, we accidentally jumped the gun on Jonathan Tilove's story on controversial changes in Barack Obama's social networking system, and for that we apologize. Tilove writes an excellent article that captures the frustration MyBO users are having with the switch from a points system for taking various actions on behalf of the Obama campaign that allowed some of them to really stand out to a more generic "activity tracker” that significantly flattens the standing among activists. MyBO user Lisa Holmes puts it this way: "People say it's not about you, it's about Barack. But it's not. This is our campaign. We put him where he is. We invested in him." #
You Never Forget Your First 2 Million: The Obama campaign is reporting that it has reached another milestone this week as it passed the 2 million donor mark. The Obama campaign has raised a total of $340 million through the end of June while the McCain campaign has raised $145 million. The Boston Globe’s Foon Rhee explains that Obama will need to keep up the pace because he isn't taking public funding while McCain, who is taking public funds, is also being helped tremendously by the RNC. #
Channel Surfing: Interesting enough, though the McCain’s YouTube channel has dominated Obama’s this month (5 million to 2.5 million), Obama has crushed McCain this week (433,000 to 73,000). How is this possible? An Obama ad released yesterday “Three Bedroom Ranch” has somehow already gotten 74,000 views while “We’re In It Together” barn-painting campaign has gotten over 45,000. Still, those are peanuts compared to McCain’s hits before the Olympics. #
The Web on the Candidates
le Presidente technologique: techPresident has been nominated by PoliticsOnline for The Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics. We are honored to be held in the same esteem as groups like mySociety and The Sunlight Foundation. The top 10 nominees who receive the most votes will be invited as honored guests to the world eDemocracy Forum in Paris. Allez, viens! We hope you'll vote for us (blue poll on the right)! #
The Reviews Are Starting To Come In On McCain's Technology Plan: Communications law expert Harold Feld has a posted a critical review of McCain’s tech policy. Feld is an Obama supporter, and he zeroes in on what he sees as incongruities in McCain's policy. Most of McCain's tech "policy,” according to Feld, is merely “just variations on McCain's standard “I hate taxes” theme.” #
Barely Interesting: BarelyPolitical.com is the third most viewed YouTube channel this week and has already posted ten videos this month. If you haven’t watched a BarelyPolitical video yet, they are usually most successful when the computer effects work. If you have ever been disappointed with the lack of bikini-clad girls in the political process, you will likely have a field day. #
MoveOn Special Election Briefing: MoveOn.org has posted a professional video narrated by Director Eli Pariser warning MoveOn members not to get complacenct during the last 100 days of this election. The video outlines 5 reasons why Obama supporters must keep on their toes. Looks like the doldrums of summer are starting to end... #
Baracky II: Meanwhile, here is a great little spoof of Rocky II featuring McCain and Obama, a sequel to the original Baracky. This one is well done, so well done that we wonder who is actually behind it. Here's hoping we'll get to see a Rocky IV spoof, featuring former Russian former-President Vladimir Putin as Ivan Drago. #
TechCongress and Beyond
Those Wretched High School Freshmen!! Republican Representative Virgil Goode lashes out at the Obamajority, an ActBlue fundraising page started by a 14 year old blogger. The blogger, Populista, has on DailyKos.com has set a goal of getting 50 donors for Democratic challenger Tom Perriello. Well, mission accomplished: according to the ActBlue page, 53 donors have contributed and have doubled the amount raised since the time of posting. #
In Case You Missed It...
The Colbert Report’s Stephen Colbert covers McCain’s “wiki-policy” (that is, supposedly lifting facts from Wikipedia). Colbert says McCain is “now using the people’s voice, or at least, lip-synching to it.” #
Following Mark Penn's e-mails that leaked last week, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and Jennie Rothenberg Gritz have found some e-mails from the Obama campaign that show a campaign in crisis as well. #
The Economist on Technology in Politics: The Economist has a great article that provides a pretty complete overview of the importance of technology in elections since Howard Dean’s presidential run. The article features techPresident Founder & President Andrew Rasiej. #
]]>MyBO NOOO!: MyBO (my.barackobama.com) has eliminated the system of awarding “points” in favor of a new “activity tracker,” a relative scale that tracks activism from 1-10. According to Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and one of Barack Obama's coordinators of online organizing, the "activity tracker" uses a new formula to gauge activity and is now visible to everyone on MyBO. #
McCain's Technology Plan: Yesterday we reported on Sen. John McCain’s lack of tech policy. Today, the Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Holmes and Amy Schatz reports that McCain will unveil a technology agenda that “bundles previously announced pro-business proposals with continued support for a hands-off approach to regulation.” The plan, Holmes and Schatz report, will "reiterate Sen. McCain's opposition to Internet taxes and new laws guaranteeing net neutrality, the idea that Internet providers must treat all legal Internet traffic equally." It also says that McCain maintains, "Congress shouldn't get involved in writing rules for the Internet. Any net-neutrality problems should be left to federal regulators like the FCC to deal with." #
The Web on the Candidates
Charts and Crafts: New voter-generated video has Andrew Sullivan’s approval and it is pretty effective. Entitled “Approval Ratings: The Public v. McCain,” the video attempts Al Gore’s mastery of fear-inducing charts. The horror! #
Newmark's 2.0 Cents: At ValleyZen.com Craig Newmark talks about technology and the Obama and McCain's online strategies. On Obama "using [technology] to tell people hey let's work together to get stuff done." On McCain: "McCain's site is kind of like my own joke about myself which basically says 'you kids get off my lawn.'" #
TechCongress and Beyond
"Drill Here, Drill Now" Wants to Give You Gas: American Solutions has announced a video contest on why America “must adopt a ‘Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” approach.” The winner will receive free gas for a year. American Solutions will choose the Top 3 videos based on their substance and creativity and present them on the contest page where users will be able to vote on their favorite. Oh and Newt Gingrich is involved, if you haven't figured that out yet. Gingrich wants the creative American to help shape the message because "you know, YouTube is a great thing. And it's a lot of fun." #
In Case You Need It...
If you’ve ever thought to yourself “Hey! I would love to see 47 seconds of video that would quickly go through President Bush’s past four years but without any context,” well today is your lucky day! If you need a little more, I can only really describe it as a psychotropic-time-travel-nightmare. This type of work is not new for creator Jeremy Tubbs who in the past has made similar videos for Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. We're not sure what the message is but this video probably accurately portrays the adrenaline a candidate must feel. Also, it looks 3D, if you blur your eyes. #
]]>Anti-McCain Video Gets a Digg Gold Medal: Top video on Digg in the past 24 hours, "Republicans and military men on John McCain" is an anti-McCain voter-generated video that so far has just over 200,000 views. Getting a boost from Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall doesn't hurt either. The "spine chilling" video is set to that terrifying song from "Requiem for a Dream" but the power of the song pales in comparison to Scott Ritter’s warning on Iran. Note: the video contains graphic images. #
Keeping Up With VP 2.0: The competition for Vice President is, unlike the presidential campaign, one of the most opaque and ill-understood phenomena in politics, and the public doesn't tend to get much involved until after the pick is announced. Proof of that--if you go on Facebook and search for groups with the word "VP" in them, they're mostly about student government elections. But we're keeping our eye on a new group just launched by Huffington Post’s Max Bernstein, called “100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh for VP.” The anti-Bayh drumbeat has been picked up by sites like The Washington Note and The Washington Independent, and it looks like the netroots is trying to send Obama a signal. The Clark for VP Facebook group has 5,527 supporters, and the Romney for VP group, which has been around all summer long, has a measly 238. #
C-SPAN. C-SPAN RUN. C-SPAN is partnering with New Media Strategies to create a Convention Hub for both conventions which will allow searchable, linkable, and embeddable access to C-SPAN video coverage. There are some other cool features, like real-time tracking of credentialed state and national political bloggers that will be aggregated to enable users to get the
latest online convention news and analysis, and yes, they will also be tracking what’s happening on Twitter. #
And the Winner is... The Next Right’s Katherine Miller compares the websites for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. While she acknowledges the advantage the Left has online, Miller calls this “something of a rare win for the home team.” You can’t argue with her, the RNC website is the clear winner. #
The Candidates on the Web
The Importance of Being Texted: The Op-Ed section of the New York Times features a fine piece today by Garrett Graff on the importance of Obama's text-messaging campaign. The effectiveness of text messages, Graff says, is that they mobilize people to act, unlike e-mail, blogs, YouTube, and Facebook. He believes the Obama campaign’s decision to reveal his VP via text is less about “proclaiming the selection and everything to do with getting out the vote on Election Day in November.” #
Must Read on McCain's (ahem) "Tech Policy": Center for American Progress's Amanda Terkel has written a piece for Salon on Sen. John McCain’s tech policy (or lack thereof). Terkel argues that since McCain has not revealed any plan for the country’s technology infrastructure, he is ill equipped to lead. With issues that will need to be addressed in the near future, such as national broadband and net neutrality, Terkel writes that McCain will likely talk about “getting advanced telecommunications services to all Americans” will likely “allow the industry to determine what all this means.”#
TechCongress and Beyond
Organizing Tips For Organizers: Open Left’s Matt Stoller has a few more words for the #dontGo movement. The movement issued a press release which reads “#dontGo Movement founder Eric Odom today called upon Americans nationwide to leave their homes for Washington, D.C. to protest high gasoline prices.” Stoller offers a quick lesson in organizing: “Real protest organizers tend to distinguish between themselves and 'Americans nationwide'. Paid staffers from conservative interest groups don't.” #
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The Clash Continues: The McCain campaign hits Obama with another video called “Fan Club” which rehashes the same themes as “Celebrity,” “The One,” and “Family.” Released a day after Obama’s response “Embrace,” the new McCain spot is already doing 30,000 views better on YouTube (“Embrace" was not released on YouTube for BarackObama.com). Meanwhile the Obama campaign has also released a video specifically for Ohio called "We're In It Together." It’s two minutes long and appears to be made specifically for the web. The video is part of a call-to-action to have Obama supporters in rural America paint their barns with the Obama logo, just as the people in this video did for Obama back in July 2008. So while it has not had many views yet (just over 8,000 as of this post), it looks like it has no intention of going viral (but then again, who doesn't want to go viral?). #
Wiki-policy?? CQ Politics’s Taegan Goddard reports on similarities between a speech made by Sen. John McCain yesterday and a Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Look at it this way, if it is discovered that McCain lifted the material himself, at least we would know he’s using the internet! #
The Web on the Candidates
Paris? Pink? Perfect! (Porridge, too!) TechRepublican’s David All is impressed by McCain’s online advertising campaign featuring Paris and Britney. He is struck not only by the celebrities but the “pink and purple.” Always a riot, he deems the ad worthy of a helping of porridge to Team McCain. #
Digg. Bury. Repeat if necessary. The Los Angeles Times's Web Scout reports that "in the last 30 days, at least 28 stories critical of GOP Sen. John McCain have been mysteriously "buried" — meaning enough Digg users have voted against a story that the submission may no longer appear on the site's high-traffic front page." While on Digg this story is flagged as possibly inaccurate, this comes on the heels of McCain's Points-for-Comments story published in the Washington Post last week. According to the LA Times, Digg CEO Jay Adelson said his team had checked the stories in question and was not concerned by any organized burying trends. We will make sure to keep you updated on this story. #
TechCongress and Beyond
Moneybombs make Strangebedfellows: ActBlue reports that Accountability Now PAC has done well straight out of the gate. Led by Jane Hamsher of firedoglake and Trevor Lyman of Ron Paul’s moneybomb campaigns, the organization is a left-right coalition that is an outgrowth of the FISA fight. On August 8th Accountability Now organized a “Strangebedfellows” moneybomb and raised more than $150,000 in 24 hours. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, a supporter of the PAC, writes about the campaign here. We’ll be sure to follow how they intend to use to money to “hold Washington accountable.”#
Don't Leave... but #dontGo: The Next Right’s Soren Dayton reports on the three things that make him think the #dontGo campaign may be on to something. Dayton is pleased to see that not only is the campaign raising money for the GOP but it is also “changing Democratic minds,” such as a top Democratic House candidate calling for a special session of Congress to convene. #
In Case You Haven't Noticed...
McCain is spending more on search engine advertising and Google creates an "elections and issue advocacy" team. #
]]>TXT 4 VP LOL: The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas reports that the Obama campaign will announce his vice presidential nominee via a cell phone text message sometime before the Democratic National Convention. The Obama campaign sent out an invitation last night via e-mail and text message to its supporters to participate in this revolutionary form of announcement. Vargas notes three things: “the casual reference to the candidate ("Barack"); the call to "forward" the text (to friends, relatives, etc.); the perceived personal appeal of being "the first to know"; and the timing -- the text was sent two weeks before the Democratic National Convention kicks off. That gives plenty of time for the text to be passed around.” Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) of the New York Times asked on Twitter if it was smart or silly and the response has been mixed. Jeff Jarvis thinks it’s silly while Adam Mordecai of Advomatic, Todd Ziegler of Bivings ,and techPresident editor Micah Sifry think it’s smart. #
Epic Pwnage? The Obama Campaign’s “Fact Check” division released a response to McCain’s “Family “ attack ad. The video is over three minutes long, has horrible sound quality (I had to use my earphones), and has not amassed many views (just over 65,000). The video, however, strangely benefits from the lack of quality – it really feels like you are sitting down with Brian Deese, Obama’s deputy economic policy director. Though the story has done well on Digg, but I don’t know if I would call this “EPIC PWNAGE.” #
The Celebrity Game: The Obama campaign released “Embrace,” their ad response to “Celebrity,” McCain’s biggest YouTube hit so far. The ad accuses McCain of being “Washington’s biggest celebrity”, therefore not only hitting right back on the celebrity charge but connecting McCain with Washington (old politics, broken system, etc.). The ad starts with John McCain walking on to the Late Show with David Letterman, appearing on The View, then hugging George W. Bush. Though the ad acknowledges the sting that must have been felt by the Obama campaign, the ad is effective and uses a much different tone from McCain’s ad. We'll be keeping an eye on "Embrace"'s viewership, to see if it can top McCain's Celebrity views. #
The Web on the Candidates
Cybergenic? Maybe Not: The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik responds to Paul Saffo's recent column on ABCNews.com about "Obama's 'cybergenic' edge." Zurawik asks “Is Obama the first ‘cybergenic’ candidate?” Zurawik challenges the idea that Obama is to new media what FDR and JFK were to radio and t.v., respectively. While Zurawik acknowledges Obama’s extensive use of new media, he says “follow the money.” The record spending on Olympics advertising suggests that T.V. is still king. #
How Will McCain Announce His VP 2.0? The Next Right’s Patrick Ruffini offers a strategy for John McCain’s VP announcement to compete with the Obama campaign’s VP text plan. Ruffini writes the McCain campaign should email 100 supporters selected at random an hour before the official announcement. This not only would enable the campaign to make a strong push to collect e-mail addresses, the 100 people selected would get to feel like “real insiders.” The question is, does McCain want to get baited into a battle of new media? #
So Long, Mr. Haircut: The blogs have been chatting away on John Edwards (check our charts). Ruby Sinreich writes a nice little piece that reflects the betrayal his supporters feel and the relief that he is not a presidential candidate. She believes that his decision to play both sides after he stepped out of the race reflects an ego-driven politician’s purely self-serving attitude. #
Barack Roll: Oh, and Barack gets Rick Rolled (or did Rick Astley get Barack Rolled?) Thanks to the inimitable Hugh Atkin. #
In Case You Haven't Noticed...
President Bush has been busy at the Beijing Olympics, and YouTubers have noticed. He apparently had time to visit with the women's beach volleyball team. Here it is, your moment of Zen. #
]]>New vs. Traditional Media. Which is More Delicious? The Next Right’s Brian Donahue responds to Patrick Ruffini’s post on “new media” vs. “traditional media” and posits they are not mutually exclusive and offers a new approach. Ruffini asked the other day “Why do TV ad suck so much compared to web video?” According to Donahue, the two are "apples and oranges" and each has benefits. The successful campaign must combine them and create a comprehensive advertising strategy.#
Cybersecurity and the next President: Wired writer Bruce Schneier has a memo for the next President on how to get Cybersecurity right. While Obama has a cybersecurity plan and McCain is supposedly “working on the issues,” Schneier offers three pieces of policy advice for whoever is elected. He says the devil is in the details, but he outlines a convincing strategy.#
"Democracts Praising McCain" vs. "Maverick No More": The DNC has released its response video to McCain’s “Democrats Praising McCain” ad released yesterday. The video, called “Maverick No More,” features the same crew from the McCain ad, only this time the participants criticize McCain, most notably by arguing that he has changed and that he is a continuation of Bush. Instead of Ms. Clinton capping it off as she did in the "Democrats Praising McCain" ad, however, the DNC decided to give the honor to Bush, who says, "It's been my honor to welcome my friend John McCain as the nominee of the Republican Party, I wish you all the best. I'm proud to be your friend.”#
The Candidates on the Web
Astroturf Story #1: The Washington Post's Paul Farhi covers the McCain campaign asking its supporters to spam blogs with McCain talking points in exchange for prizes, a story that's been bouncing around for weeks. The website asks visitors to “Spread the Word” and gives clear instructions on what to write and where to write it. Zack Exley notes this strategy won't matter: "People in politics aren't motivated by points. That's not what gets people to act. They're motivated by genuinely caring about the issues." A phony grassroots movement like this, known as “Astroturf” campaigning, is not new to Presidential elections but the Washington Post notes the reward system pushes it “one step further.” Prizes include books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, a ride with the candidate on the Straight Talk Express: no word yet on moustache combs. #
YouTube Dominance: The Washington Times's Stephen Dinan reports that the McCain campaign for the first time has taken a lead over Obama in YouTube hits. This is a major reversal for the presidential YouTube campaign, which, until just recently, had seen Obama quadruple McCain’s view count. Obama still trumps McCain in total views and according to techPresident's YouTube watch, that lead is not going anywhere anytime soon. Still, McCain has had a strong run of viral videos in the last few weeks while Obama has been flat. McCain’s top three hits are all attack ads on Obama, so it will be interesting to see if the YouTube campaign will be won by the message or the view count. #
TechCongress and Beyond
Astroturf Story #2: Open Left’s Matt Stoller goes on a lengthy diatribe over the Drill Here, Drill Now #dontgo campaign. He had posted just days before on how the campaign is hardly grassroots because it was launched by Newt Gingrich (another “Astroturf” campaign!) and today is responding to blogger and “grassroots activist” Eric Odom who was disturbed by this claim. Odom extols the campaigns 10,000 e-mail list, Stoller is unimpressed.#
Stop the citizen-presses! Decision ‘08, a competition launched earlier this year by MySpace, NBC News, and msnbc.com to find two citizen journalists to cover the national conventions has selected its winners. Matt Britten and Sara Pat Badgley were chosen by over 50,000 users with their video submissions that answered “How will you stand out in the crowd and get the scoop no one else can?” Matt Britten, who pulls an Eddie Murphy and plays every role in his video, tells us “I’m Matt Britten and I want Decision ’08 to send me to the convention so that I can ask the real questions that real Americans want answered and I’ll stand out in a crowd because as you can see I’ll be everywhere at once.” #
More Contests! Ten finalists have been selected by the Democratic and Republican National Convention Committees for the “Why are you a Democrat/Republican in 2008?” and the winners will attend their party’s upcoming Convention. People have submitted their videos and users can vote until August 13th. Finalists from the Republican contest range from a 13 year old to a Jedi Master and the Democrats range from a man from a community hit by home foreclosures to a war veteran. Make sure to vote! #
Pollworkers of the 21st Century: Pollworkers for Democracy, powered by CREDO Mobile, is an effort to recruit, train, and network 5,000 citizen pollworkers for the upcoming election (and beyond) in order to run a fair and accountable election. We here at techPresident are very impressed: how should we rethink and improve pollworkers of the 21st Century? So far they have recruited almost 2500 pollworkers and the site is a custom implementation of MoveOn.org’s event tools. #
Cyber-Threat at the DNC: According to the Colorado Independent, security experts fear that the Democratic National Convention could face a cyber-attack this summer. With fifty thousand expected in attendance of the Convention, many will be on laptops that are not secure and face threats such as hackers “accessing delegates' credit card information to cutting off cell phone service in the convention sites, sending out fake news releases and planting porn in an unsuspecting politician's laptop.” “Rogue“ networks could be planted that could trick users into signing in and perhaps even voluntarily give away personal information. Ah, the lure of free wifi is mighty yet the wiser must turn from the Siren seductress. Nancy will be techPresident’s correspondent at the Convention, we wish her a safe cybertrip!#
The Candidates on the Web
New McCain Ad Somehow About McCain: John McCain releases yet another ad today called "Democrats Praising McCain" which features, you guessed it, Democrats praising McCain. Featuring Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Russ Feingold, even Barack Obama, it is the first ad in a while from the McCain campaign that is primarily about McCain. That is, of course, Hillary gets the last word: "I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House, and Senator Obama has a speech that he gave in 2002." That quote is from March of this year, which if you can remember that far back, was one of the ugliest months of the Democratic primary.#
TechCongress and Beyond
Twitter-Puppets: Any other day, a story about a man pretending he is Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t make news. But what if this man was pretending over Twitter? Blogger William Beutler raises suspicions over a tweet made by David All regarding the #dontgo protest and a nearly identical tweet posted only minutes earlier by a clearly fake or very confused “speakerpelosi.” This Twitterganger has erupted into Twitter scandal. To fill you in, the term that is catching on is “sockpuppetry,” but I think it’s unfair. If anything, All’s masquerading is definitely deserving of “sock-artiste” #
In Case You Missed It...
Micah Sifry writes about the hidden agenda of John McCain's "The One" video. Though it is defended as just being silly, Micah delves deeper and suggests that the ad is actually full of coded messages meant to convince evangelical voters that Obama is actually "literally, the anti-Christ." #
]]>A "Landmark" of Epic Distortions: MySpace and the Commission on President Debates (CPD) have announced a partnership today that will allow users to watch a live webstream of the upcoming debates at MyDebates.org. They are calling it a “landmark internet partnership.” Frankly, the word “landmark” has never sounded so disappointing: to techPresident editor Micah Sifry, it sounds more like a shack.
The CPD announcement uses some form of the word “engage” six times, which proves that if you say something enough times you can convince even yourself that it is true. Engage sounds good right? One of these ways is that users "will be polled periodically throughout the debates with short questions” and will be able to respond with “thumbs-up/down.” How engaging! We here at techPresident give this “landmark internet partnership” an emphatic thumbs down.#
A Citizen-Driven Alternative: Ari Melber digs further into the debate news and notes that the CPD/MySpace announcement also probably means there will be no Google/YouTube forum, as was planned for New Orleans September 18. He writes that the Google proposal offered "a citizen-driven alternative to the TV debates where anchors frame and referee every interaction that the nominees have" and criticizes the CPD's approach as "a broadcast model online -- another platform for people to consume debate content, not help shape it."#
Prez Hilton?: There are distractions in politics and then there are distractions from the distractions. Paris Hilton flexes her media-might with her response to John McCain’s “Celeb” ad released a week ago today. Yesterday on FunnyOrDie.com, she tongue-in-cheek announced her candidacy for President in this ad and, if this is any indication, will be running a much more positive campaign than McCain. The video already has over 2.6 million views and it has only been 18 hours. “Celeb” was a viral hit, amassing over 1.6 million views in a week, but a lot of that attention can probably be attributed to buzz-power of Paris Hilton. Creator of the Paris for Prez video Adam McKay (writer of Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, and Anchorman) thinks the McCain campaign should be careful on how it intends to generate viral hits: “McCain made one huge mistake: He drifted into the world of pop culture.”#
The Candidates on the Web
Celebrity, minus the Celebrities: The McCain campaign is continuing the “celebrity" attack on Obama with a new ad “Family” released today that unfortunately is missing Paris, Britney, or the Montauk Monster. #
Checkin' the Charts: It's been a while since we'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. In a word: Obama keeps adding friends, but McCain has been gaining traffic. And Bob Barr seems to have some real grass-roots support...click here for more details#
TechCongress and Beyond
All Twitter, No Bite: For the last few days, the online right has had a field day organizing around the Congressional recess, demanding that the House come back into session to vote on expanding offshore oil drilling. But yesterday the #dontgo movement got a taste of their own theatrical medicine, when a handful of leftie net activists, led by our own Liza Sabater, launched a "Twitter bomb" and turned the tables on the right, flooding the #dontgo hashtag with snarky anti-drilling messages. Liza's got the whole story here, and she raises a good point: was the traditional media too quick to cover the House protests? Do a few new websites -- http://dontgo.us/ and http://dontgomovement.com/ -- really equal a movement, as Patrick Ruffini argues? One measure of this "movement's" depth should be how much its activists put their money where their mouths are, and judging by the #dontgo page on Slatecard where a total of one supporter [!] has donated $100, there ain't much there there. Of course, it's still way to early to tell and we'll be watching this closely.
One thing is clear about this episode--it's been a galvanizing event for what David All would call "modern" Republicans, and it's pulled several more Republican Congressmen into the new media mix, with now six regularly using Twitter for what DontGoMovement.com founder Eric Odom calls "collaborative politics."#
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