The VAN Now Hosts Campaign Websites and Provides CRM Services for Dems

New addition to the “Winning in 2010″ discussion of website/CRM vendors — the Democratic Voter Activation Network (VAN) is now hosting campaign websites and providing CRM services to candidates, alongside such other Dem campaign packages such as Wired for Change/DLCCWeb. The VAN is much better known for its work behind the scenes providing voter-information databases to help candidates with phone-banking, block-walking and other grassroots outreach, but they’re now providing the additional site-hosting/mass-messaging services that most campaigns need.

This move adds to an array of integrated online campaign packages available to Democrats; Republican candidates seem to have access to such technological riches (they more often have to piece together a web presence using software and services from several vendors). Which R vendor will jump in and fill the gap? As a Dem, I can hope that the answer is, none of them…

Trackur = Reputation + Social Media Monitoring

Online reputation and social media monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages--including news, blogs, video, images, and forums--and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

YouTube Interviews: Pelosi, Boehner, Reid Answer your Healthcare Questions

For over seven hours yesterday, the nation's top leaders gathered in Washington for a unique conversation on the future of health care reform. Moderated by President Obama, the healthcare summit revealed disparate views on current legislation, with Democrats arguing for comprehensive reform and Republicans pressing for a more incremental approach (or for starting over entirely). We streamed the entire summit on CitizenTube, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all agreed to answer some of your top-voted questions from our Google Moderator platform during the event. (We also offered the opportunity to Senator Mitch McConnnell, the Senate Minority Leader, but he was unable to participate due to a scheduling conflict.)

Social Media, Huh?, What is it Good For: A Report

The non-profit IdealWare  surveyed more than 400 staffers at various non-profits back in November to find out what social media tools they're using, and whether they're finding those applications are meeting their organizational needs on three fronts: reaching new allies, fundraising, and deepening their relationships with existing supporters.

Keeping Out the Trolls: Relevancy in User-Generated Content

In the summer of 2008, J.R. Johnson sold Virtual Tourist to Expedia for $85 million dollars. While Johnson seems like the type of laid back Los Angeles entrepreneur that would take some vacation time, his quest for relevancy had him launching a new community the following March. Lunch.com is Johnson's attempt to cut through the noise that has proliferated since he first started in the user-generated-review space in 1999.

Joe and I attended a lunch-time discussion of the book Netroots Rising forthcoming from Nate Wilcox and Lowell Feld at the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. Like the title would suggest, the book is about the up-turning of the traditional political order (top-down campaigns) for the tumultuous rabble-rousing democratic square of the blogosphere.

The event itself was a good cross-section of the people you'd hope to lure in with this topic--old and young, men and women, suits and jeans. Although I do strongly suspect Joe and I were among the few from the right side of the aisle. Not surprising for a book written by two Democratic consultants with an introduction from the DailyKos founder.

What I Didn't Know: Perhaps this is my own lack of schoolin', but I had never paid much attention to the foggy genesis of the "Netroots" movement. The first six-figure internet campaign was in 2002, a race for the Texas governorship. The 2004 campaigns of Howard Dean and Wesley Clark were early pioneers in harnessing the power of the internet--and the blogosphere. Clark's campaign "imploded" over this issue, while Dean's attempted an early in-house social networking system, much like the 2008 candidates are all using.

That means none of the 2008 candidates are doing anything "conceptually" new and different, as Wilcox and Feld were both quick to point out. (Which helps put their efforts into better context.) They're just utilizing more people who are more adept at using technology. And, one would presume, it's better technology, period. I've at least been playing with web design long enough to know the websites of today are much prettier and more powerful than the ones from four and six years ago.

What I Thought Was Useful: Political campaigns need to continue to figure out the best ways to integrate an organic grassroots online movement within the traditional campaign framework. I believe it was Wilcox who suggested that many politicians seem to be using the Netroots community without being in it. The example he used was of campaigns sending out blast emails--but the emails are written by staffers, not the politician. Internet technology is supposed to help people connect to other people. How truly and genuinely connected do we expect our politicians to be? Does it matter?

What I Didn't Agree With: There was, of course, a brief discussion of why Republicans seem to be lagging in their use of technology. One suggestion was that Republicans are inherently "hierarchical" older people. Since I don't consider myself hierarchical or older, I was confused. Especially because I wasn't quite sure what a hierarchical person would be like. Fond of fitting oneself into hierarchies?

Anyway, the explanation I like better is that the use of technology has been due to Party circumstances rather than personal shortcomings. Democrats were out of power and disenchanted with the party elite in the early 2000s; they were looking for new avenues to organize. In contrast, Republicans were riding a swell of victory. So now that the swell has crashed upon the shore, Republicans are scrambling to catch up. It makes sense. I think it matches reality, too.

What I'd Still Like to Know: A suggested 90% of blog readers are lurkers, people who read posts but never comment, never email, never take any action. Who are these unknown they? How do we reach out to them? How much do they have to offer? I'd bet it's a lot, and also I bet figuring out how to expand the "e-base" will be the next big thing.

Episode one of my new vlog, "Hit or Miss," which identifies some positive "Hits" and "Misses" for Republicans.

It took House Speaker Nancy Pelosi less than 100 hours to prove to voters across the country what the consequences of a Democrat majority really were - and the poll numbers prove it. Americans across the country are fed up with the failed leadership of the Democrats, while Republicans in the U.S. House have every intention of making our stay in the minority as brief as possible.

With 202 members, the largest Republican minority in over 50 years, we are within striking distance of the majority. And we are playing to win. And so are our candidates.

Two candidates in particular have already hit the web running. Both Andrew Saul and Greg Goode have wasted little time getting out front online.

Saul, who will be challenging freshman John Hall (NY-19), is a successful business man who's already done himself a favor by hiring Patrick Ruffini's company (Engage) to build his site. Saul's site is a great example of how other Republican challengers can utilize the web effectively. It's smart, attractive and an easy site to navigate. Be sure to check back soon as Ruffini and his team continue to expand on capabilities and lead the way for Republican challengers.

Goode, an Indiana State University official, is challenging freshman Brad Ellsworth (IN-08) in a district that gave President Bush 62% of the vote in 2004. Goode has also stepped out in front and launched phase one of what looks to be an excellent online presence. Goode, who already has his socnets in place, has also tapped into the YouTube community and has launched a blog.

Other challengers who have stepped up online include Maj. General Rick Goddard, State Senator David Cappiello, and Steve Greenberg.

The game has changed, and it's refreshing to see our Republican challengers taking the right steps - right now.

In addition to writing for TechRepublican, I also write the ElephantBiz.com blog and, of course, my own blog, BillHobbs.com. After noticing that the latter is listed on the blogroll of Fred Thompson's pre-campaign website, among several conservative blogs, I decided to check the blogrolls on the websites of the other 10 Republicans currently running for president, and found something interesting:

Not all of them have blogrolls. Not all of them even have blogs. And some of them have a very different view of how to interact with the world of new media, grassroots media and social media than do others.

That led me to write a series of posts surveying the websites of the 11 candidates for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination to report on how they interface with the "new media," a/k/a/ the "social media" world of blogs, MySpace, YouTube and such.

What I found was a rather wide disparity. Some candidates had the requisite links to official campaign pages on social media platforms like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, while others actively court the independent conservative blogosphere with "Bloggers For ____" lists and other ways to reach out the the grassroots media.

I also found that money, or the lack thereoff, bears little correlation to how a campaign is able to incorporate the social media into its efforts.

I presented the survey in a series of 11 posts at ElephantBiz.com on Monday, giving each a grade.

Below are links to the 11 reviews. Your comments are welcomed.

Sam Brownback Web Review
Jim Gilmore Web Review
Rudy Giuliani Web Review
Duncan Hunter Web Review
Mike Huckabee Web Review
John McCain Web Review
Mitt Romney Web Review
Tom Tancredo Web Review
Fred Thompson Web Review
Tommy Thompson Web Review
Ron Paul Web Review