As I noted a month ago, the Democratic version of MyGOP didn't do much better.

Political social networking might just not work. Or it might be that both efforts offered such limited customization, and such a limited range of interaction options, that they give people little reason to log back in or tell their friends.

MySpace lets users change just about anything on their page, which has led to some serious crimes against web design but also gives people a much greater sense of ownership. MyGOP lets users customize their welcome message... and that's it. MySpace lets users interact in a variety of ways about whatever they want. MyGOP lets users interact by raising money, holding house parties, or volunteering, all political activities (though they don’t even offer a place for people to discuss politics!).

Which one are you going to build a social network on?

I don't think you can read too much in to the success or failure of the initiative for three reasons.

First, it was launched in May, and involved an event held just days before Memorial Day weekend. That was going to limit its effectiveness simply due to attention deficit of people trying to plan vacations and family outings. However, it was necessary if you want to get the thing in view and start marketing it far enough in advance of Election Day to develop a user base for the election effort.

Second, the goal on this, unlike all the online efforts of the Democrats, is not just to raise money. If viewed in total, all the donations, all the additional volunteers recruited, the voters registered, etc., all add up to a sum greater than a single part. Look, for instance, just at the team number and you’ll see 10 people who are communicating to nearly 1,000 others on behalf of the GOP.

The Bush eCampaign was constantly asked why we were not bringing in as much money as the Democrats, despite the fact that we registered more then a half million voters online, grew a volunteer base of 1.7 million, and were responsible for nearly 750,000 voter contacts by phone and door to door.

The RNC is pursuing the same strategy. This is not about seeing our supporters as an online ATM machine, but rather as recruiters to grow, strengthen and deepen the party (which includes financial strength, but is not limited to that).

Finally, if you do want to focus solely on money, then as I mentioned in one of the posts that triggered the Politicker post to which you linked, you must consider the FEC restrictions on national committees that prevent this from being as successful as it could have been.

As most followers of online politics know, the vast majority of the netroots would rather support a candidate than the committee. Many see the committees as either inherently dysfunctional or supportive of candidates of which the netroots do not approve (ahem... Joe Lieberman...). As a result, they prefer to give directly to the candidates who gain their favor.

If the RNC was able to link this to a fundraising appeal for candidates, and you could pick the candidates you support and only raise funds for them, rather than for the party, I think it would be a lot more successful.

Michael is correct...there is more to the RNC effort than just money...This is quite clear from the main "leaderboard" page which in addition to donations also ranks volunteers recruited, voters registered, and team members. Calling that program a "failure" strictly on the basis of money would be like calling the Bush '04 online effort a failure because Kerry outraised him.

When I log into my page on democrats.org, I am presented with a graphic and then the ability to send emails to people asking them to go to my page and give money. There is a thermonitor graphic for one thing...donations. The GOP site allows a much higher degree of personalization and customizing options than the DNC one. When I log into my page on gop.com, there are huge number of options. Notably, there are progress bar graphics for voter registration and volunteer recuritment in addition to just money. You can set up customized campaigns and goals for each of these. Also impressive is the tie-in to google maps to locate house parties in my area. Where are the similar featuers on the democratic site ? It is ironic that Dean's own campaign site from 2003 was in some ways more technologically advanced than the current DNC one.

But the number of volunteers recruited and voters registered is still pretty lousy. The top ten for volunteers have recruited 117 new people, with ranks 6-10 recruiting 5 each. The voter registration numbers are only slightly better. In all of the category's tracked, half of the top ten numbers come from an account linked to GOPrepublicans, a MySpace group with over 15,000 members. Even in that group, whose entire MySpace page is devoted to their MyGop campaign, only 405 out of 15,000 have corssed over to join the official GOP effort.

I don't think any of these figures could let you call this a success. Neither of these programs give people a compelling reason to join, come back, or make it a center of their online activities.