President Obama's election campaign dazzled the political world with its use of the Internet as an electoral tool. Fundraising, voter communication, and citizen mobilization were just a few of the tactics that reached new levels of intensity, sophistication and success via the Internet. More than any other time in history, the mobile device rode shotgun with the precinct captain.
Following his victory, many believed Organizing for America--the outfit that followed the presidential campaign to keep volunteers and now housed at the Democratic National Committee--would continue the same level of political wizardry promoting Obama's legislative agenda.But the high-tech political organization has some bugs.
If Only Facebook Had Been Around in the 1950's
We’ve been talking a lot about whether or not social media is the way to go for our firm. By the fact that I have a blog (and the fact that if you’re reading this, you’ve probably found out about it through the link I put on Twitter), you can guess my stance on whether or not we should do it (hint: it’s yes. Duh.). There’s been a lot of resistance from folks who aren’t familiar with things like blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc. These people know that these things are part of the amorphous yet trendy “social media movement”, but they don’t really get what’s behind them and don’t really use them. These (typically over 50) folks are contributing to statistics that show a huge age divide in the use of Facebook. And from my vantage point, they’re holding up the whole process and making everything so difficult.
The Social Media Revolution Isn't Coming - It's Here Already
You can run, you can hide, but no matter where you go – the social media revolution will find you. Social media is changing the way we do business, the way we communicate and share ideas, and even the way we think and carry out our everyday lives. Where did you get your news from this morning? TV or your Google Reader? How did you find your job? A classified ad in the newspaper or a job posting on LinkedIn?
Many of you might have run across this video in the past few weeks – but in case you haven’t, take four minutes out of your day and give it a watch – some of the information might surprise you.
Social Networks: Boomers Feel Left Out
Even though baby boomers make up more than one quarter of all US Internet users, and even though the majority of this group spends over five hour per week online, a new survey by Burst Media found that only 14% of boomers feel that the content on the Internet is focused on people their age. An even smaller number of boomers (9.9%) thinks that Internet advertising is focused on their demographic. With regards to social networks, most boomers also think that these sites are not focused on people their age.
