Old media meets new media:  A conservative stalwart, Americans for Tax Reform, is using act.ly to encourage GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava to sign its Taxpayer Pledge....

Dede Scozzafava: Sign the Taxpayer Pledge

Taxpayers are faced with another dilemma in the special election to
replace former Congressman John McHugh® of New York’s 23rd
Congressional District. There are three candidates competing to replace
McHugh: Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, liberal GOPer Dede
Scozzafava, and Democrat Bill Owens. Of the three, Doug Hoffman is the
only candidate to sign ATR’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge. It’s a simple
60 word pledge that says the signer will vote against and oppose any
and all attempts to raise income taxes on the federal level.

Facebook is the Most Valuable Source of Traffic [Stats]

Between search engines and social media, there are a lot of different ways that people can get to your website. But which of these sources provides loyal users that come back to your site multiple times?

That’s the subject of a new study by ad network Chitika, who analyzed the browsing habits of 33 million unique users over the course of September. 

Tweetmeme Adds Analytics to Make Sense of Twitter Links

As Twitter grows, with an estimated 50 million+ live accounts, it is increasingly becoming an important source of traffic for many Websites. But getting a handle on how much traffic it is actually delivering, where it is coming from, and the viral nature of that traffic is a real challenge. Today, “social media experts” everywhere can rejoice because Tweetmeme is launching Tweetmeme Analytics, which offers a full dashboard showing how many times a link has been tweeted, retweeted, and clicked on by which Twitter users, in what cities, and from which referring sites and URL shorteners.

New Battlefield, Old Guard

Leslie Graves emailed me earlier today with an interesting point: The institutional Right is finally spending money online, but there's still a mis-alignment between the organizations and the Rightroots.

[L]egacy orgs are starting to be active online...like righty e-activists have always wanted them to do ... but for the most part, they are not doing the things online that we wish they were doing. ... Thus, there is no love lost between the conservative e-activism community and the orgs.  [A]ll this money being spent ... finally ... online but generally not doing the things that e-activists probably would prefer be done.

Facebook Users Can Afford to Pay

Facebook is the new king of social networking. But the site is stuck with an old business model that prevents it from cashing in on the increasing affluence of its users and the monopoly it has over their attention. Simply put, Facebook should charge.

A recent study by Nielsen Claritas indicates that the top third of lifestyle segments measured by the researcher relative to income were 25% more likely to use Facebook than the bottom third. Meanwhile, less-wealthy segments were 37% more likely to use MySpace.

Americans Not Sold on Twitter?

Twitter may be the rage on Capitol Hill, but the American public at large is not yet sold on the microblogging site, according to a new poll.

Only 15 percent of Americans believe that Twitter is an important new tool for mass communication, according to a new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll conducted in late August. 

Can Petition Tweets Change the World? An act.ly Quarterly Report

What has surprised Jim Gilliam most in the three months since he launched act.ly, the rather clever Twitter petition gizmo that, with a few clicks, creates a pivot point for tweet-based social action? Good question! And one I put to Gilliam, now that act.ly has 589 petitions and 16,000 tweet "signatures" under its belt.

Announcing Twitterslurp for Personal Democracy Forum (#pdf2009)

Anyone that has been to a tech conference the last few years knows that there is a huge amount of back channel communication that occurs on Twitter.   People provide live coverage of the talks they go to.  People organize dinner plans.  People stage revolts against panelists.  The conversation is constant, unfiltered and takes place in real time.

Meet Act.ly: Petitions Designed for Twitter

Jesse Haff and I were inspired by Clay Johnson's post last week about Twitter being the future of email marketing to figure out how Twitter could breathe new life into the boring old petition, the stalwart of email-based activism.

Meet act.ly.

It's only been out for a day and a half, and already it's put Wired in the hot seat for not including enough diversity on their panels, and both Gov. Granholm and Lt. Governor John Cherry of Michigan signed a petition to the Michigan Senate GOP to "keep the Michigan Promise Scholarship."

Nielsen Debunks Myths on Teens and Media - They Still Watch TV!

Teenagers spend their days texting, tweeting and hanging around on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace! Honestly, that’s what I assumed too. Turns out I’m wrong, and I needed Nielsen to teach me that. The audience measurement company is releasing a brand new report on teens and media with a lofty promise of serious myth busting and hard fact presenting that will downright knock your socks off.

Ready for some eye-openers? Here we go:

With an ever-expanding media universe, social networks play an increasingly important roles in the lives of teens … as they do in pretty much everyone else’s, too. The 33 million or so teenagers (aged 12 to 17) in the U.S., against all odds, keep on consuming quite a lot of non-connected media, such as TV, radio and - get this - even dead-tree stuff like newspapers next to their online activities.