The Web on the Candidates

• Short Bursts of @Politics: Medill Reports's Jason M. Breslow has a roundup of how Twitter is being used for politics these days. We're seeing folks use it to debate, to share ideas, to organize (though, as Jason mentions, we're not seeing either Barack Obama and John McCain use it to good effect). Witnessing the evolution of how people are pulling and shaping Twitter to fit their own political purposes is downright fascinating. It feels like watching an otter figure out how to open an oyster with a rock. Perhaps no Twitter experiment was more fascinating during last night's Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden debate than NPR's Fact Check. Those of us watching the debate were invited to spot questionable claims, link them to a primary source, and tweet the package with the #factcheck hashtag. Also on the evolution-of-Twitter front, Nancy Scola (nee me) suggests that -- forget websites and domain names -- hashtags are the new new way to organize the world: "like OpenID for ideas." With that mind, we're building a compendium of active political hashtags; please drop your favorites in the comments. #

• Spread It to Your Closest Friends: With appearances by such luminaries as Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, Dustin Hoffman, Jennifer Aniston, Eva Longoria, Ellen DeGeneres, Forest Whitaker and more than a dozen other celebs, the new "5 Friend" voter video is like lunchtime at the Ivy. Pointing viewers to the most excellent Google Maps voting information interface, this video really, really wants to go viral -- "5 friends" is a reference to how many people you should be sending it to. (Though those efforts may be hampered by the fact that the five-minute piece seems a little endless. I guess you don't tell Leo to zip it.) Sarah Silverman, as per usual, cuts to the chase: the goal here is to make sending around the video "rampant, like herpes -- but for positive." #

The Candidates on the Web

• With iPhone App, Obama's Wins by Letting Outsiders In: While we showered some praise yesterday on the Obama iPhone app, techPresident contributor Michael Whitney asked why bother with little over a month left in the campaign. But conservative consultant Patrick Ruffini is a much bigger fan. He leads his comprehensive review by saying "it's good." After a few more iterations, predicts Patrick, it will be "a truly killer political app." What's most remarkable here is that the Obama iPhone app is actually the fruit of a relationship between the Obama campaign and a team of ten or so volunteers, led by iPhone developer Raven Zachary. Using a suite of open source goodies, the team whipped together the app in about a month. The project marks a clever tapping of Obama's tech-savvy creative-class supporter base. There's is a decentralized/centralized campaign with internal nodes willing to harness the power of that network -- in this case, the Obama campaign's Director for External Organizing Scott Goodstein, who came out of a grassroots organizing background. Team Obama let a thousand flowers blossom, spread a little fertilizer of their own, and then picked the prettiest ones. Brilliant. Groundbreaking. #

• Ground Game Case Study: Nevada: The Christian Science Monitor's Ben Arnoldy asks the million-dollar question: can people-powered outreach really win presidential elections? It's tough to know yet, because polling doesn't always pick up activity at the margins. But Ben takes Nevada as an example, and has some interesting findings. First, the Obama campaign's program there has produced one tangible gain: by a 93,000 voter margin, more Democrats are registered to vote than Republicans. That's a flip-flopping of Nevada's traditional breakdown. And second, the McCain campaign is having success pin-pointing their outreach with a "high-tech, streamlined approach." (Details in the piece.) "It’s not where you live, it's how you live," says the head of McCain's Nevada campaign." Ben gently pushes back by saying that "some experts...consider micro-targeting to be mostly hooey." Ha. Hooey. What a great word. I should use that... #

• Is Behavioral Targeting Hooey? Or Just Creepy?: National Journal's David Herbert notes that a poll released Thursday from Consumer Reports National Research Center found that 54% of respondents said they were troubled by the idea of their online habits being tracked. And while Congress has concernedly held hearings on behavioral targeting, political campaigns from the presidentials on down the ballot are, reports David, using making use of the practice this election cycle. Might behavioral targeting fall into the realm of what technology makes possible but maybe we shouldn't do until we understand it better -- you know, like making monkey-human hybrids? #

TechCongress and Beyond

• House Web Regs Enter 21st Century: They said it couldn't be done. But the House of Representatives has indeed updated its web regulations to loosen restrictions on Members of Congress communicating through third-party websites, whether that be Twitter or YouTube or Qik or what have you. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rather pleased, and thanks the Open House Project in her remarks. Some habits die hard, though. The House is still insisting on an archaic "exit notice" telling visitors when they're leaving House.gov and entering the wilds of the Internet. Honestly, does anyone who knows how to use a computer in 2008 ever really find themselves befuddled about where they end up on online? "Sweet Mary, a minute ago I was visiting Congressman Smith's virtual office, and here I am now on somethin' called the YouTube..." #

• When You Care Enough to Send the Very Snarkiest: If you're still searching for that completely jerky way to push your lazy friends to vote, look no further. BotherVoting.org, a project of someecards and other partners, has that perfect pro-vote message, whether it's "sorry the country is so [fouled] up that you need to bother voting" or "voting is the perfect way to not feel like an [doofus] when someone asks if you voted." (via Ruby Sinreich) #

behavior targeting | field programs | House regulations | microtargeting | the Open House Project | Twitter
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