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Obama and the Internet

Akshay Sura — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:52:35 +0000

Although much of the media attention Barack Obama is receiving now is focused on his governance and Health Care, it’s important for other politicians and businesses alike to keep in mind the paradigm shift of the Obama election.

Obama transformed campaigning and politics through his use of the Internet as a campaign tool.

He did not stop with a simple website, as many candidates have posted in the past, or a simple money raising campaign as Howard Dean and Ron Paul effectively ran.

Obama created a complete internet package for his political campaign that took full advantage of the new medium in ways that had not been fully imagined before.

Remember his videos – which he compared to Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” — on YouTube? Those were viewed millions of times — for a total of 14.5 million hours. How much would Obama have had to pay for 14.5 million hours of television advertising time? According to the New York Times, $47 million.

And with the YouTube videos and internet messages, Obama was able to get his own message out, the way he wanted it told and as long as he wanted it to be. He wasn’t constrained by 30 or 60 second advertising spots, and he wasn’t filtered and quoted by journalists.

His message was framed, produced and presented entirely according to his own standards and what he wanted to accomplish. Best of all in a political campaign, the cost was negligible to reach those hundreds of thousands of potential supporters.

For politicians, this internet opportunity is the merging of all the best possible factors for campaigning: unfiltered messages going directly to supporters, low cost, wide accessibility, and good credibility as a source of information – great messages for individuals and businesses to keep in mind as well.

Election Night TV: Networks Aim to Dazzle With Gadgetry

Edward C. Baig and Jon Swartz — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

It’s election night, and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer is in New York talking to an Obama campaign strategist in Chicago.

But instead of the split screen or window TV viewers might typically see during live remote interviews, the Obama spokesperson will be projected as a three-dimensional hologram, making it appear as if he or she is in the Manhattan studio with Blitzer. The network plans to conduct similar holographic interviews with representatives from the McCain campaign in Phoenix.

“Everyone is doing something virtual this election year,” says CNN Senior Vice President David Bohrman, the guy who pushed the technology. But Bohrman believes CNN is going where no network has gone before by employing Hollywood-style effects. “Virtual elements in a real set look so much better than a real person in a virtual set,” he says.

Election night is like the Summer Olympics and Super Bowl for network news divisions, and each is carting out eye-popping technical toys to draw viewers.

“For the big game, you see all the bells and whistles. The real challenge this year is new stuff that will travel easily on multiplatforms,” says Andrew Tyndall, publisher of TyndallReport.com, which monitors television network news. “Not only must this look good on TV, but on portable devices like cell phones.”

Shooting Someone Who Isn’t There

There are plenty of reasons for the gimmicks: This year’s race has been intensely followed, and is expected to draw tens of millions of voters — and viewers — on Nov. 4. Significantly more people are expected to watch Tuesday night’s results than in 2004, when about 64 million viewed election-night results on network and cable TV, according to Nielsen.

USA Today got an exclusive peek at the holographic technology, which CNN hopes to unveil prior to the election on “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer. CNN is still fine-tuning the technology.

“It’s so complicated,” Bohrman says. “The crew is basically shooting someone that isn’t there.”

CNN will have 44 cameras and 20 computers in each remote location to capture 360-degree imaging data of the person being interviewed. Images are processed and projected by computers and cameras in New York. There’ll also be plasma TVs in Chicago and Phoenix that will let the people being interviewed see Blitzer and other CNN correspondents. Bohrman says the network can project two different views from each city so Blitzer can appear to be in the studio with two holograms.

Bohrman won’t disclose the cost, but says, “We’re on our budget for election night.”

‘Information and Context’

The movie studios have used similar technology as far back as “Star Wars,” says Bohrman, who has dreamed about the prospects for a decade. But until recently, the networks have lacked the computing horsepower.

Borhman flew to Israel the day after the vice presidential debate to enlist the help of two tech companies — Vizrt, which works on state-of-the-art virtual studios; and SportVu, a developer of a real-time camera tracking system used in live sporting events.

CNN correspondent John King, who is closely associated with the network’s Magic Wall, which shows detailed election results, says broadcasters have to be careful with new technology.

“Is it really part of telling a story or some sort of eye candy to make people go ‘wow?’ We have to add information and context.”

What Others Are Doing

Fox News has built three new HD studios for Tuesday night’s broadcast so it can make better use of the additional TV real estate with updated county results, comparative numbers from previous elections and poll-closing times. A giant wall with touchscreen technology will provide electoral map results.”We’ve been planning for this night for two years,” says Jay Wallace, vice president of news editorial product at Fox News.
ABC’s digital maps make their debut, letting correspondents look at up-to-the-minute votes by county, and compare votes as far back as 1960. Also, a double ticker line at the bottom of TV screens will display current popular and electoral totals for Barack Obama and John McCain. Beneath that will be results for Senate and gubernatorial races, says ABC News Creative Director Hal Aronow-Theil. For HD viewers, ABC is providing more information on the left margin of the TV screen.
NBC spent the past year designing two studios that make the most of visual technology. One features intricate exit-polling information that digitally appears on a wall. The other studio lets political director Chuck Todd analyze presidential results by region, state and county. “We finally figured a way around using pie charts,” jokes Phil Alongi, executive producer of election night for NBC News and its cable channel, MSNBC.NBC, too, plans to make use of a bigger HD screen size with detailed results from the presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races. And it has partnered with social-networking giant MySpace on Decision08, an online section that includes video, news feeds and blogs from NBC News.
CBS News will analyze national and state exit-poll data, using state-of-the-art technology to display vote-counting and demographic data.Touchscreen technology will allow anchor Katie Couric to drill down on state and county results for all races, including propositions. “It is very fast technology using real-time data,” says Frank Governale, vice president of operations for CBS News.
Comedy Central, a go-to cable channel for political news for many young people, is teaming with a social-networking site. The TV home of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is using the services of Meebo to host chat rooms for users to share their political views.Among CNN’s other innovations on election night are a virtual Capitol Building used to illustrate the changing balance of power in Congress. But the most promising election winner is the hologram. “Either this is an evolution in the way we do live interviews on television,” Bohrman says, “or it’s a nice try.”

Youth and the Web: The Political Campaign Game-Changer

Seth Lieberman — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

It’s hard to dismiss the role of the Internet in this year’s elections. Both political parties are using online strategies to an extent never seen before in a political campaign. From daily candidate blogs with updates on issues, to made-for-YouTube commercials, to the use of technologies such as SMS to announce vice presidential selections, to — perhaps most discussed — the use of online tools for fundraising, the Internet has become a dominant force in this election.

In fact, young voters in particular have come to expect that they can gather information about candidates and issues online, and a failure by candidates to address this expectation may negatively impact their campaigns and their fundraising.

Results of a recent election survey indicate that while TV ads are still considered the most effective way to reach voters, e-mail and Web sites are now ranked higher than phone or radio campaigns. Furthermore, among young voters (18 to 24 years old) less than 5 percent say that direct mail is effective. (Visit the E-Voter Institute for more information.) Meanwhile, a recent Quibblo.com survey indicated that a full 36 percent of quiz takers didn’t watch presidential candidates’ acceptance speeches on TV during the recent conventions.

Drawing Them In

However, while the Web is an excellent mechanism for reaching voters, in order to convert observers into voters, candidates will need to fully embrace new media along with tried and true marketing and advertising techniques. For example, rather than focusing solely on display ads and e-mail marketing campaigns, candidates should include social media networks, online polls, videos and blogs to ensure that those who are interacting with a campaign on the Web today convert into voters (and those who influence voters) tomorrow.

Why are these mechanisms so effective with youth voters? Because “engagement” is king president. Engagement is critical for garnering attention and support whether it is for a product, an advertisement or a political campaign. What do we mean by “engagement?” It is an active participation in and interaction with whatever is taking place — in this case, the political process — including the ability to learn about key issues, participate in a dialog about these issues, provide feedback and believe that that feedback is being heard and having an impact. Candidates who fully embrace the Web can turn their monologue with voters into a true dialog with their constituents and achieve that coveted direct connection. Of course, they should take great care as a dialog goes both ways — candidates have to be willing to actually listen and not just speak, and ignoring the fact that they are in a dialog can be disastrous.

This is not a new concept: An engaged audience has always been the goal of any marketer –including those marketing presidential candidates. What is different, however, is how people are being engaged and the level of engagement that individuals, particularly the young, are demanding. Not surprisingly, it is the Internet and its unprecedented ability to educate, facilitate communication, and inspire that is driving this engagement.

Lessons For (and From) Online Advertisers

Online campaign strategies are not without their risks and pitfalls, and a savvy Internet campaign manager understands that the “rules of engagement” are just as important as the engagement itself.

Taking a page from the online marketing manager’s book, it’s important to keep in mind that heavy handed, in-your-face strategies don’t work — best case, voters ignore these; worst case, they create a negative perception of the candidate that uses them. For example, annoying and aggressive ads are likely to be ignored and can damage a voter’s impression of a candidate. The rapidity with which a ranting viral video or slam can spread online has no offline counterpart. Hell hath no fury like an angry Internet user.

Additionally, the dialog must be open, which means criticism as well as praise is accepted, shared and remains visible. While some posts or comments on a social networking site or blog may be inappropriate and must be removed for safety reasons or because they are not in the spirit of an open dialog, censorship as a whole is not recommended. The challenge for the political marketer, then, is to influence and manage the conversation so it is a constructive dialog that shows the candidate in the best possible light. Savvy consumer product companies also understand that their best option is to read reviews of their products, particularly the negative ones, and use this information to improve future versions, change their marketing messages, or correct misinformation.

Interactive technologies afford important opportunities to engage, solicit opinions and involve individuals in the process — which is very effective. Quizzes, surveys and polls are some of the most effective strategies for soliciting and assessing opinions, both of voters and of “consumers.” Whether gathering opinions on careers, products or candidates, surveys are an effective way to engage audiences.

Cultivating a sense of community is also helpful. People return for more information and invite others to join the conversation. This is the closest to “control” that political campaigners can get in this age of easy access to information (and misinformation) and seamless borders.

Meanwhile, peer influence, particularly among young voters, is important. Youths in general are much more likely to be influenced by the opinions of others, particularly in their cohorts. Sites that support and allow for peer interaction and discussion are an important forum for reaching young voters and young consumers. Additionally, candidates demonstrate that they “get” the Web and new technology, and therefore, by association, they “get” young voters who are tech savvy.

Be Prepared

Lead times are short, and trying to keep “news” under wraps is almost impossible. With so many bloggers and such easy access to information, it is extremely difficult to keep secrets in a virtual world. Whether it is regarding product defects or candidate personality traits, marketers are better off being prepared with a proactive, thoughtful responses than moving into “denial” mode.

In addition, “containment” no longer works. It seems that nothing is sacred, and intimate details about candidates’ personal lives, private e-mail accounts, etc., are all likely to be leaked — like it or not, fair or not. So, per the “open dialog” mantra above, the question becomes, how does the candidate or the marketer share and engage the audience in a conversation about pertinent issues, and how can the candidate put the news (positive or negative) in the best possible, most favorable light? Chance favors the prepared marketer.

Multiple sites, multiple technologies, multiple advertising mediums — people are getting their information online, but that means a lot of things. It means major news and information sites; it means major portals. In addition, it means social networking sites, polling and survey sites, e-mails, Internet-enabled mobile phones, and accompanying technologies such as Twitter and text messaging. Then there are the traditional marketing mediums — TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, magazines, telephone, etc. Candidates and marketers must integrate many — if not all — of these to effectively reach their audience(s). While young voters are more likely to be online and receive their information online, this does not mean there is not a place for more traditional advertising mediums — both to reach this audience and to reach other audiences.

This election season is exciting not only because of the issues being discussed and the backgrounds of the candidates participating, but also because of the way that technology is transforming the entire election process. The importance of technology and the Internet in this election heralds what is actually a new, more populist era in domestic politics — one in which the individual is more deeply involved in the political process and the political process is increasingly exposed to the individual.

RealScoop Tells You When Politicians And Celebrities Are Lying

Don Reisinger — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:12:25 +0000

Have you ever wanted to know when politicians are lying? A startup called RealScoop thinks it can nail it down for you in real-time with the help of voice analysis technology that it claims, is used widely in law enforcement and fraud prevention.

Dubbed the Believability Meter, RealScoop’s analysis technology analyzes over 100 vocal elements of the human voice and performs over 1,000 calculations per second to find out if a politician or celebrity is telling the truth.

The site itself features a bunch of videos collected from outside sources that are played in its own player. The player features a meter that changes dynamically as it analyzes what’s being said. If it believes the person is lying, the meter turns red and moves towards the “highly questionable” area. If it believes the person is telling the truth, the meter stays green and in the “believable” section.

I watched a few of the videos on the site and found it questionable, to say the least. Maybe there is some real evidence to prove that this sort of technology can tell if a person is lying or not, but let’s face it — there’s no way to prove it and I’m not sure, after watching the videos, how a person can go from believable to questionable by uttering a few simple phrases like “uh.”

I’m sure the highly political among us will find value in this to help prove their point that the candidates they support are telling the truth and those they do not are lying, but the more objective among us will see this for what it is: pure rubbish.

Politics Never Smelled So Tweet

By Saul Hansell — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:27:23 +0000

If Senators John McCain and Barack Obama actually do debate Friday night, you will be able to watch what thousands of viewers think of their verbal sparring almost as they talk. Twitter, the service that lets techno-hipsters broadcast their thoughts in 140-character bursts, is setting up a special politics page to make it easy to tune into the chatter.

At midnight Thursday, the company is launching election.twitter.com, the first specialized section of its site. Like Twitter’s main service, it is dominated by a big white box. But instead of typing an answer to What are you doing? the election site asks, What do you think?

Below that box is a constantly scrolling display of the thoughts (called tweets in Twitterspeak) of other Twitter users. These include all the tweets entered on the election page as well as those entered in any other part of the service with obvious election-related phrases, such as Palin.

Twitter was started as a way for people to communicate with friends and acquaintances, but it is increasingly serving as a window on public opinion, too. You can now use Twitter’s search engine to see what people think about anything from the Wall Street bailout to beer.

We have all these people who use Twitter every day to react to what is going on, said Biz Stone, the company’s co-founder and creative director. Major events, such as concerts, TV shows and natural disasters, tend to prompt people to tweet.

We saw off-the-charts messages per second during the acceptance speeches of the political conventions, Mr. Stone said.

By creating the election site, Twitter is giving people an easy window into all of those political tweets and encouraging more of them. While the page may be of particular interest during the debates, it will be up for political junkies at all times.

Twitter is following MySpace and Facebook, which have created ways for their users to connect with each other over the election.

The election page also has links to the Twitter feeds of the McCain and Obama campaigns, although neither have been very active on the service of late.

There are also links to see tweets about the major presidential and vice presidential candidates and a list of phrases culled from recent tweets that represent hot topics.

And if the Friday night debate is canceled, there will probably be a lot of tweets about that, too.

The Race For Attention Tightens Online As McCain Gains On Obama

Don Reisinger — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:12:59 +0000

Now that convention season is over and the candidates have about eight weeks before they find out who will lead the United States for the next four years, it’s time we compare each candidate’s attention online as we head into the final stretch.

According to Google Trends data, Republican candidate John McCain is quickly gaining ground on Barack Obama and witnessed a spike in searches the day he announced Sarah Palin as his running mate. However, Obama witnessed an even greater spike at the same time, perhaps due to his convention speech the night before and some comparative searches pertaining to Palin.

Can We Predict The Outcome of The Presidential Election With Each Candidate’s Traffic Data?

Jason Kincaid — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:55:43 +0000

Can traffic to a Presidential Candidate’s homepage be used to gauge who will win this year’s election? Hitwise has published recent data on the traffic both American presidential candidates have seen in the last month (ending 8/23), and while the results may not shed much light on the forthcoming election’s outcome, they reveal a few interesting trends.

Hitwise has ranked each state by two criteria: its contribution to each site’s total traffic, and the the overall likelihood that a user in the state will visit the candidate’s site (called the Representation index). If either metric is applicable to the election, it will be Representation Index, which indicates the candidate’s popularity on a per-state basis and isn’t affected by the state’s population.

Unsurprisingly, California represents the most traffic share for both candidates, accounting for 13% of Obama’s total traffic and 12% of McCain’s. But both candidates have also seen a similar Representation Index from the state, which means that a similar number of Californians have visited each site. Given the state’s Democratic history, this is surprising – apparently Californians are interested in learning about the opposition. Conversely, in left-leaning New York, McCain’s site has only seen about half as much traffic as Obama’s.

The Democrats Lose: Comparing the Convention Web Sites

Akshay Sura — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:33:57 +0000

I've been fighting this sinking feeling that we're headed for another four years (or eight) of a Republican President. Not that I have anything against John McCain except that I'll never vote for him. But I'm a pretty staunch Democrat, and it'd be nice to blame my own party for the world's problems for a change.

In the last presidential election, I formulated a theory that the most social media-savvy party would win. John Kerry and the DNC pretty much screwed the pooch every chance they got. Bush, on the other hand, had some remarkably media-savvy folks doing everything from real-time blogging and spin of debates to carrying their Swift Boat campaign to YouTube.

Kerry, of course, went on to lose by 3 million popular votes and a lot more states.

Could John Kerry have reached another 3 million people online? Dunno. But surely a few smart moves online could've helped when his image started to crumble.

Fast forward. It's 2008. The Democratic National Convention is going on now, and the Republicans start theirs in a week or so. So I decided to compare their respective convention sites based on simple stuff.

I may just have to change my party affiliation.

Broken Links: Democrats Lose

I checked the Republican National Convention site using Integrity. 1000 pages, no broken links. A few timeouts, but that was it.

I checked the Democratic Convention site. 2000 pages, 200+ broken links. Ouch.

Democrats lose.

Social Media Hooks

Then I checked each site for social media 'hooks': Ways to easily follow each party on Digg, Twitter, etc.

The Republicans seem to have their act together:

The Democrats don't. They opted for 'gavel to gavel' hidef video. Which is neato, but not quite as helpful. Plus they made a totally unexplainable technology choice. But I'll get there in a second.

Brand

The Democrats have billed their convention as open to all. Their home page, though, looks more like a Nike commercial:

It's pretty. It's also utterly devoid of any updates, any text, or any call to action for me, a long-suffering Democrat. Oh, yeah, and given how many e-mails and phone calls I've gotten from the party asking for unity, don't you think the home page should, I dunno, ask for unity?!

Oh, yeah, and the DNC home page still shows 'one hour to go' as one of the blog headlines, 24 hours later. Way to stay up to date, guys.

The Republicans' home page, on the other hand, is kind of folksy, like you're going to a county fair:

Not my style, but I'm not their audience. And their page has several calls to action: Form a local 'watch party' (which somehow makes me think of the McCarthy era, but no one's perfect) or sign up for e-mail updates. The DNC site has the e-mail signup too. But I could actually find it on the Republican site.

Video: PHAIL

I'm old, so I'm not sure I used 'Phail' right. But the Democratic National Convention site uses Silverlight for all video:

Huh?

Why on earth wouldn't you use YouTube, or another video streaming service, or at least use Flash on your own server?

So, playing video on the DNC site required that I download not one, but two plugins. Not a major hardship for me. But kind of dumb if you're trying to spread the word to as many people as possible.

Oh, did I mention the dire warning message I got when I tried to install the plugins:

In 2012, when you're running to unseat John McCain, try using Flash, which has a ridiculously large user base. Or at least get up-to-date certificates for your plugins.

I know, Microsoft probably wrote them a big honking check to use Silverlight. But isn't "we're for sale" kind of the wrong message to send when you're trying to elect a President? Even if it's true?

To Be Fair

The Republican National Convention site has its problems, too: Two conflicting e-mail signup forms, a writing style that makes me cringe and a candidate that can't remember how many houses he owns.

It's About the Effort, Stupid

It cost about $15 million to prepare the Pepsi Center for the Democratic National Convention. Plus a whole lotta money for security.

I'd cheerfully have built their web site for, oh I dunno, $250,000. My therapy bills would probably top that by the time we were done.

For this tiny slice of the pie:

I would have cheerfully made the effort run a link checker on the damned site. I would've thrown in a few social media links for good measure, made sure their plugins worked properly, and hit them with furniture when they mentioned using Silverlight as their video platform.

I hope I'm wrong. At least a President from my party will take my money and give it to the poor, instead of taking it and giving it to Iraq. But if not, you guys know where to find me in 2012.

Advice for Mobile Marketers, Courtesy of Obama

Claire Cain Miller — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:26:14 +0000

Technology pundits have been heralding the “year of mobile” every year for a decade, but this year might really be it. The latest evidence: the tizzy over Barack Obama’s much-anticipated text message announcing his pick for running mate.

The Obama campaign is expected to send out the news sometime before the candidate’s rally on Saturday to everyone who has given it their cell phone numbers. The plan has political junkies and bystanders alike buzzing about the imminent Obama text message in a way that would make brand marketers swoon.

Mobile marketers are studying the Obama campaign’s initiative, which offers lessons for startups hoping to help big brands reach consumers on their cell phones. Advertisers have been slow to market via mobile phones, but that is changing thanks to a rash of mobile marketing startups and increased use of text messaging and mobile Internet.

Barack Obama wins Web 2.0 race

John Brandon — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Barack Obama has won! Barack Obama has won! That’s right, in a nearly uncontested race for digital superiority, the upstart Democratic presidential nominee has obliterated John McCain at the digital polls, trouncing his opponent with an Internet onslaught that is almost embarrassing for the Republican nominee.

Here’s some interesting tidbits from the race:

1. On FaceBook, Obama is so far ahead that the race is over. He has over 1.3M friends compared to a paltry 200K for McCain. All things being equal, the McCain FaceBook site looks like it was designed by an eighth grade civics class and Obama’s looks remarkably clean and professional.

2. MySpace, which seems a little more focused on media distribution than anything else these days, also reveals an obvious winner. Obama’s site is more personal with blog entries and lots of doodads: posters, buttons, videos. McCain’s site looks almost comatose with few updates and a cluttered, hurried design. Obama has almost 500K friends on MySapce and McCain only has about 63K.