Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. 

There are a few companies right now that are hot in the world of tech: Gowalla/Foursquare, Twitter, and of course Facebook. Each one of them are changing the game for Social Networking in their own respect but Facebook seems to be the only one right now that is making millions (if not billions) of dollars doing it.

So it is only fitting that those of us in the political arena take advantage of everything that Facebook has to offer to advance our candidate or agenda. To do this - it is only fitting that we gain the knowledge from other leaders in this space.

Now, I am not one to tout a conference as being a must attend, because it really depends on what you are looking for, but the Facebook Success Summit that is being put on by Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner is a must attend conference for anyone waning to learn the ins and outs of Facebook.

The conference (which is virtual, did I mention that) is featuring 22 of the leading Facebook experts from multiple industries all at your finger tips. You can watch them live or on demand at your own leisure. The cost: $297, less then plane ticket to a regular priced conference.

As I said previously - I am not one to use this blog for selling things but this conference is a must attend if you do any work at all on Facebook.

Yesterday Mashable posted a great article from Tim Ferriss on the '7 Great Principles for Dealing with Haters' and I thought that the #TechGOP crowd needed to see this and how it adapts to dealing with Political Haters on your website, Facebook, or Twitter.

• It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it. What matters is how many people do.

This is the most important point to make in dealing with these people. A majority of the time people are not going to post a comment of "Thanks for this Press Release" but will be more likely to post "Your an idiot for thinking people are smart!" Your information is reaching those that need to get it, they just might not be leaving feedback. 

• 10% of people will find a way to take anything personally. Expect it.

No matter how your word it or how high level you make your analogy there is always going to be those 1 or 2 people that will think you are writing/talking about them. Expect it and do not dwell on it.

• “Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.” (Colin Powell)

Remember, not everyone is going to agree with you or your candidates stance. Always publish your content in a way that is going to be effective and to the point. Do not try to write it in a way that makes everyone happy. We do this far to much in politics trying not to offend people and it is doing nothing but watering down our message. 

• “If you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative.” (Scott Boras)

If your breaking ground, challenging the status quo you are going to upset a lot of folks and most (if not all) will be against you. Stand your ground and run your course remembering principal 1 and 2. 

• “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” (Epictetus)

If you expect going in that your going to be thought of as a foolish or stupid from your opponent (or liberals), then you are not going to worry how your content is put online but instead will focus on producing quality content. Your message is being distributed and knowing that people will mock you is a mental process that you have to get through to make an effective and precise point. 

• “Living well is the best revenge.” (George Herbert)

Another way to look at this, "Do not acknowledge a negative attack and its effects on your campaign." The second you respond, delete it, or worst yet change your content they have won. 

• Keep calm and carry on.

Tom made the point much better then I can on this one "Focus on impact, not approval. If you believe you can change the world, which I hope you do, do what you believe is right and expect resistance and expect attackers,” 

What tips or tricks do you use to deal with online Political Haters?

Yesterday Google released from beta a new addition to its already popular Google Adwords system. This feature entitled 'remarketing' by Google is part of its interest-based advertising program and is defined as a way "to reach users as they’re browsing the web on sites within the Google Content Network. Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based on their past interactions with your website."

How this is going to work is that when developing your current website you will place a a snippet of code provided by Google that will tag your site users as a visitor to 'Jeff for Congress.' Now when they visit other websites throughout the web that are a part of the Google Content Network (YouTube, Gmail, etc..) they can be presented with an ad from your campaign reminding them to vote 'Jeff for Congress.'

How can a campaign use this:

* Time Sensitive Fundraising (Money Bombs)
* Get Out The Vote Efforts
* Volunteer Recruitment
* Direct Message Penetration

Prime example, earlier in the week the RNC launched FireNancyPelosi.com to solicit donations. If I viewed the website on Sunday when it launched but failed to donate, the RNC could have launched a 'remarketing' ad campaign that reminded me on Monday morning when visiting another website that the FireNancyPelosi fundraiser had only 40 hours left and I should come back to give money.

This is without a doubt going to change the game. Having the ability to serve someone specific ad(s) as a result of them visiting a unique page on your website just completely changes the game of how online messaging will work.

Yesterday TechCrunch featured an article about the mobile payment processor Square being put to use in political circles all around the country.

And now, a new use case has popped up for Square: political fundraising.

Square is currently being used in two campaigns. Silicon Valley VC Josh Becker, who is running for state assembly in California's 21st district, has been using Square at fundraising events. And lawyer Reshma Saujani, who is running for Congress in New York's 14th district, is using Square at campaign fundraising events, including at an event in San Francisco on Friday.

Square is ideal for taking money at political fundraisers for several reasons.

One issue has surfaced that does put a few wrinkles in many campaign's plans:

For many types of donations, you need to take the donator's name, occupation, address, and other information. Currently Square doesn't allow users to input all of this information but Dorsey says that they are releasing Square's API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.

Definitely a hassle for campaigns to do both, but it looks like the process is going to be resolved quickly.  Have you used Square for your campaign? If so, let us know what you thought of it.

Radian6, "a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web," just launched their new dashboard this past week to private beta (set to end in April) that brings their powerful monitoring tool to your desktop via Adobe Air.

This new tool is quite powerful. It not only tracks the conversations happening on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, mainstream news sites, forums, videos, blogs, boards, and public discussion groups but it also lets you engage your social communties straight from the interface. No more worrying about going to 10 different websites to track the latest comments on your newest YouTube video, it can be done in one place.

While the above is a strong feature, I believe the biggest benefit to any campaign team or new media shop is the ability to have a dedicated workflow. This allows you to tag, assign, and route posts to individual members of your team.

As expected it has the ability to break out the different media types into separate windows or to even break out on different keywords, tags, etc... This is very handy, if for example, you are tracking an individual item within your campaign that maybe separate from your specific message.

The cost for this product starts at $500 month for up to "10,000 net new monthly results (individual posts that match your overall profile keywords)"  From there the cost goes up to $1,000/month for 25,000 results, $1,500/mont for 50,000 results, and then $500/month extra for each 50,000 results.

So yes, it is costly but it can be a life saver if you are a smaller campaign trying to track a message within a large media market with only a few staff members.

Hattip to TechCrunch as they reported on this article, but also mentioned a few start-up companies that are challenging Radian6 in this space: ScoutLabs (starts at $199/Month), Visible Measures, Viralheat (starts at $9.99/month), HootSuite (Free), People Browsr (starts at Free).

Have you used Radian6 or any of these services? If so, were they productive for your campaign or organization?

I recently learned about a (new to me) service from PayPal that allows mobile contributions to occur for PayPal users. It is very simple and easy to setup, the only draw back I can see is that your donors must already have a PayPal account AND have their phone activated to use the mobile service. 

Below is an image provided by PayPal to show you how it works:

It is really quite simple for users - they text a Keyword (TechRepublican) to a specific short number that your campaign has created. Once that text is received the donor receives a phone call from paypal to verify the donation with their mobile pin number. Once this has been done and the process is complete - the donation is made. 

I have yet to see any political campaigns using this functionality - but I also do not know each and every single campaign out there. Have you used it for your campaign? If so, please let us know your experience with it. 

Yesterday M+R Strategic Services released their 2010 NonProfit Social Media Benchmark Study: An Analysis of Growth and Social Engagement Metrics for Nonprofit Organizations. This is coming from the same company that has performed similar case studies on email use for nonprofits (2008 & 2009).

The findings in the study, while not all that surprising, are quite re-assuring for some of the best practices we already know. 

Below are a few of the highlights:

• Organizations posted to their Facebook Pages an average of six times per week and tweeted four to five times per day.
• Each week, an average of 2.5% of each organization’s Facebook fans took action (e.g. contributed wall posts, “likes,” or comments).
• Facebook fan bases grew by an average of 3.75% each month, and Twitter followers grew by 9% per month.
• 2% of Facebook fans removed themselves or hid their news feeds each month.
• Facebook fan growth occured at a rate of 0.23% for each post by the organization.
• For every post by an organization, 0.56% of that organization’s fans viewed the Page 

A deeper read of the case study talks about the different types of organizations that were used for evaluation of Facebook and Twitter as well as a look into money raised via the 'Causes' section of Facebook.

Ever since the announcement of Square by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey I have been quite intrigued about the ability to run a credit card for donations at campaign events without the need of a computer.

Since the technology for square is not going to be ready for a few months I kept waiting for a payment technology - and low and behold PAYware has delivered. 

PAYware has come up with a complete package for taking online donations anywhere you can use your iPhone. They have created an awesome piece of hardware with a comparable web based back-end that does not tie you down to a desktop. It comes with a built in stylus (that fits nicely in the back of the hardware) allowing your donor to sign right then and the entire transaction is fully encrypted and secure. You can send e-mail receipts to the customer, run daily reports, and of course, grab all of the data for your Campaign Filings.

PAYware offers assistance in locating a merchant account service that supports its technology if you do not already have one for your campaign.

In comparison to the Square unit, it looks to me that running a credit card will be easier and more comfortable for me to do. While a small device might not protrude from the device as much, I fear myself or another campaign worker losing it. 

Nothing I write can do justice for the demo of this device. They have some great videos of each stage of the device in action from an overview, to the app, to the reader, and finally the gateway. Please check them out and let us know what you think!

One thing I have had many campaign staffers ask me about is the ability on Facebook to block people from tagging their candidate in photos. I tell them unfortunately there is no way to do so if they are already your friend. I then proceed into my rant about how I wish Mr. Zuckerberg and his team of experts would take the time to develop a approval process for photo tagging done by a "networked friend."

The usual response is then, "Ok, well how do we prevent some idiot from tagging our candidate on the picture of a [fill in your own bad picture scenario]."

Unfortunately there is no way to prevent this - but you can keep the photo tagging going viral in a few easy steps. 

If you log into facebook and navigate to your application settings page, you will want to click on the 'Edit Settings' link next to the Photos application (as pictured below):

From there you will want to deselect the option that states "Publish to Streams" (as shown below):

The same feature can be repeated in the Video application settings to prevent a video tag from being published to a news stream. 

Is this the perfect option? Absolutely not, but it can save you some headache when/if your campaign turns ugly.