R.N.C. Creates Facebook Parody Site for Obama, NY Times.
Each profile is set to include videos, news articles and sections like “Facts About Me and Barack,” “My Donations and Bundling for Barack” and “What Barack Says About Me.” The R.N.C. says it plans to continue updating BarackBook between now and the election. (Notably, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Mr. Obama’s controversial former pastor, does not yet have a profile.)
Users of Facebook – the real one – may be able to install an application on their personal page with links to BarackBook.
McCain’s No “Boy Wonder,” but Holds His Own on the Web, CQ.
Another Donatelli firm, eDonation, provides the programs for processing McCain’s Internet donations. eDonation has collected more than $1 million in processing fees from the campaign, thanks mainly to the large percentage the firm rakes in from each donation. According to its Web site, eDonation’s standard processing fee is 10 percent, which covers charges from the banks and credit card companies. In contrast, Auburn Quad, which handles the credit card processing for Democratic fundraising site ActBlue, charges a standard service fee of 3.95 percent.
It’s unclear whether the McCain campaign negotiated a special fee for processing Online donations with eDonation. The campaign did not respond to inquiries, and Donatelli declined to comment on her business arrangements with McCain.
Brandstreaming: What Is It & Who's Doing It?, ReadWriteWeb.
Pheedo defines a brandstream as "a consistent flow of content created by a brand".
To back up its case for brands using lifestreaming tools, Pheedo points to a recent Universal McCann report stating that content consumption outside of websites has increased 153% in the last 9 months. Overall, 53% of online users are consuming content outside of a publisher's site - through the use of widgets, RSS readers, social networks and mobile devices.
Who Should Solve This Internet Crisis?, Washington Post.
Our Internet economy is the strongest in the world. It got that way not by government fiat but because interested parties worked together toward a common goal. As a worldwide network of networks, the Internet is the ultimate "wiki" environment -- one that we all share, build, pay for and shape. Millions endeavor each day to keep it open and free. Since its early days as a government creation, it has migrated away from government regulation.
If we choose regulation over collaboration, we will be setting a precedent by thrusting politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions. Another concern is that as an institution, the FCC is incapable of deciding any issue in the nanoseconds that make up Internet time. And asking government to make these decisions could mean that every few years the ground rules would change based on election results. The Internet might grind to a halt in such a climate. It would certainly die of clogged arteries if network owners had to seek government permission before serving their customers by managing surges of information flow.
What ‘Facebook Connect’ Means for Corporate Websites, Jeremiah Owyang.
Essentially, the Facebook experience extends further into the web –beyond their walled garden.
Facebook Connect allows users to authenticate using their Facebook ID
Similair to OpenId (which coincidently was adopted by competitor MySpace) third party developers can allow website visitors to login to their website using their Facebook ID. This “Passport” system (much like what Microsoft tried to do) will let members leave comments on third party sites –as well as identify their friends on these sites.
McCain and the Internet: Why It Matters, Washingtonian.
The fact that John McCain hasn’t yet learned how to use the Internet himself puts him not just at odds with most of the rest of the nation but, in fact, with many people in his own age bracket. More than a third of Americans 65 and older use the Internet, according to the May 2008 numbers from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Work by Forrester Research, which uses different age brackets, shows that more than a third of Americans over 55 regularly read blogs and online forums, watch videos, or listen to podcasts. This “Internet thing” isn’t some crazy person’s niche; it will be the driving force behind the next half-century of America’s economic growth. That John McCain isn’t part of that group of “wired seniors” should give us all pause coming into this fall.
