Last night, when perusing the interwebs to select good tech reads for this morning's Second Cup, I discovered all the good snippets hail from our friends at TechPresident.

Now that the site is up and running, you can read their take on the assent of conservative online activism.

How Much to Spend Online, and Other Tips

In a wide-ranging conference call with Micah Sifry and members of the PdF Network, Engage partners Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn filled in a lot of the gaps in knowledge about Bob McDonnell's successful, online-powered campaign to become governor of Virginia, as well as about the ascendancy of the netroots on the American right.

I was listening in, Tweeting as the call progressed and furiously taking notes. Here are some highlights, but you can listen for yourself when the call is added to our archives...

Danny Glover's New Gig: Editor of Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report

The word came via email on Monday that Danny Glover, a veteran editor with National Journal and other publications, had taken over the editor's role at Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report. The Tweet Watch Report was itself launched by techPres contributor David All's David All Group early last month, a daily email tracking what members of Congress, members of the press, and other relevant people are saying and doing on Twitter.

Springtime for Republican Political Technology?

Bob McDonnell's Virginia gubernatorial campaign was just one example of a maturing Republican political technology industry.

En route to McDonnell's victory, the new governor made heavy use of technology, from web tools built by Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn's company, Engage — which they'll talk about with Micah Sifry and PdF Network members in less than an hour on the latest PdF Network conference call — to the Tusk Mobile platform for mobile engagement. We covered that, too. Republican-only vendors also worked on the other big governor's race last year, the successful campaign to elect New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. In a phone interview earlier this week, Ruffini also told me that he tested a fundraising widget in Jim Tedisco's unsuccessful special election campaign to become the next congressman from New York's 20th Congressional District.

Social Media Measurement: Assets Are Not Returns

Most smart people working in and around the social media space realise the truth in the follow quote but it never hurts to remind ourselves to measure business results as opposed to soft metrics such as the ones listed below. We should be doubly careful to ensure what we think is measurement is actually measurement and not counting.

Listen to Me: Healthcare Video Contest

It’s time for Harry Reid and Democratic Senators to stop insulting, ignoring, and misleading and start listening.  Record exactly what you want those politicians to hear from you (while keeping it clean and respectful) and upload it to this group now!

HOW:  Only OurGOP members with active accounts are eligible to participate.  Sign up for OurGOP here.  To enter, join the OurGOP group “Listen to Me: Health Care Videos” and upload your video to the group page before Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:59 pm EST.  To upload video, just click on “Add Videos” under “Get Involved” in the column to the left, attach your video, fill out the form, and upload – it’s that easy!

Outsourcing Social Media: Good or Bad Idea?

One of the big concerns about using social media for business and marketing is time. Social media activities do pose a risk of drawing you in and taking up a huge amount of your day just interacting with people.

Add that the technology is changing all the time.  It can seem impossible to keep up with all the tools, software, techniques, etiquette, and social media best practices.

It’s hardly surprising that people are looking to social media consultants, agencies and contractors to take on their social media activity. But should you? Let’s explore this.

Where's Your Donate Button?

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

This is useful for ensuring that important parts of a page's user interface are visible by a wide audience. On the example page that you see when you first visit this site, there is a "donate now" button which falls within the 80% contour, meaning that 20% of users cannot see this button when they first visit the page. 20% is a significant number; knowing this fact would encourage the designer to move the button much higher in the page so it can be seen without scrolling.

Facebook: Introducing the Preferred Developer Consultant Program

We often hear from brands, celebrities, companies, and organizations who are looking for the best resources to start building an application on Facebook.com, optimize a Facebook Connect integration or build a Facebook Page. To help you accelerate your efforts, we are introducing the Preferred Developer Consultant program to connect people to the resources they need to build with Facebook products and technologies.

100 Ways to Measure Social Media

If there's anyone out there left who says you can't measure social media, here are a hundred answers.

At most of the events I've been to lately, measurement continues to be a hot topic. The first question that comes up is, "What can I measure?" That's where this cheat sheet can come in handy: a list of 100 thought-starters.

Next Year's Twitter? It's Foursquare

Among the Web's early adopter set, the answer is nearly unanimous: Foursquare.

While the technology landscape is ever-changing, I'd argue that Foursquare already has aligned itself to become next year's mainstream hit.

GOP Leads New Media Charge

One year ago, President Barack Obama’s election win transformed political campaigns by showing the power of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and text messages.

Now Republicans are charging ahead with their own social media agendas, which are becoming more prominent in state elections and day-to-day outreach to constituents.

The GOP: Luddites or High Tech?

Are Republicans trailing the Democrats in their ability to exploit new technology to communicate with voters -- or overtaking them?

That issue flared briefly during the opening day of the Republican Governors Association annual conference here Wednesday. Former Ohio representative John Kasich offered a provocative assessment of his party's failures on that front when he complained about the lack of success of his former colleagues in Washington in projecting a compelling message to the country.

And for those of you who aren't fortunate enough to jet set to Barcelona for PdF Europe, you can listen to the audio thanks to our friends at TechPresident - Enjoy.

As the Healthcare debate kicks up this weekend with a House vote coming as early as today the House Republican Conference has put together a great list of links to help you understand the bill better and more importantly respond accurately on the many false statements being stated by the left.

• The latest whip count on Democrat votes is here
• CBO: New House Health Bill Spending Estimate, $3 Trillion over 10 Years 
• Dems Still Short On Votes, “This Is A Much Heavier Lift Than We Thought It Would Be”
• Pelosi’s mega-bureaucracy exposed: Here’s the chart Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want you to see
• Boehner's office put together a GREAT side by side analysis of Republican v. Democrat Health Care plan.
• In their own words: Dems against the Pelosi health care bill.
• Barton: Dems’ New Health Bill Covers Fewer Citizens, More Illegal Aliens
• Links for Pelosi Health Care Bill if you Need Review
• If anyone tells you Republicans “have no ideas,” please send them
  directly to this link, which is the text the GOP Health Care
  Alternative

We are at a very critical point in this debate and we need everyone to come together to KILL THIS BILL!

For your R/T Pleasure:

R/T @TechRepublican: Important Links & Talking Points for the Healthcare Debate this weekend are online here: http://bit.ly/1PYthC #handsoff

The Sunlight Foundation’s Luke Rosiak reported on Friday the Republican National Committee spent $1.4 million on the redesign of GOP.com, a figure which totals more than five times what the RNC’s Democratic counterpart spent to host and maintain Democrats.org. Sources familiar with the RNC’s digital makeover, however, contest Sunlight’s report, calling it “ridiculous.”

Rosiak writes:

The biggest disparity seems to be bandwidth costs–the RNC paid Smartech Corp., a Republican-focused hosting firm, more than a million dollars, plus $22,000 to Eloqua, compared to the DNC’s $203,000 to Sprint, Switch and Data and Servint Corp.–despite the fact that the two sites’ traffic, which determines bandwidth usage and, largely, hosting costs, was the same.

But the design of the site itself was costly, too. In the months prior to the October 13 launch of GOP.com, the committee paid $328,000 to 11 firms for Web development.

For an organization that prides itself on investigative research, the Sunlight Foundation is comically inept at reading campaign finance data. “They should learn to read an FEC report,” remarked my source.

The most outrageous of the RNC’s web-related expenditures, Sunlight’s exposé goes, is the $1 million-plus disbursement to Tennessee-based Smartech Corp. for hosting services. Smartech, considered by many a heavyweight in Republican web hosting, began consulting for the RNC in 2000.

“I can tell you from my tenure there that the Smartech bill includes a lot of things that aren’t GOP.com,” said former RNC eCampaign Director Michael Turk. “If you go back and look at that bill over time, I suspect it has always been high, regardless of who was Chair and regardless of whether they were rolling out a new GOP.com.”

The range of services provided by Smartech extends far beyond pricey bandwidth support for the party’s new website. According to party officials, Smartech facilitates internet at the national headquarters, hosts 31 state parties’ websites on the RNC’s platform, and provides broadcast email capabilities to the RNC and over 40 state parties. Additionally, a vast majority of the data aggregated by Voter Vault–the RNC’s voter microtargeting database, which compiles state voter files, information from commercial marketing companies, and census data to predict voters’ partisan tendencies–is hosted by Smartech.

Sunlight correctly notes the DNC’s expenditures for bandwidth services are well below that of the RNC, but what they neglected to report is perhaps more telling: the DNC does not provide website and email hosting to state parties.

RNC officials were not willing to disclose exact figures related to the party’s new digital threads, but offered assurances it was “well in the average for the services rendered.”

To that end, Turk said of the RNC’s web development budget: “subtract the million from the $1.4, and then deduct the $328k for development, and the big ‘shock’ here is that they spent $100,000. As is often the case with Sunlight attacks on the RNC, this one can be summed up with ‘Show’s over, folks. Nothing to see here.’”

Speaking of ‘Sunlight attacks,’ it is worth noting that all are not equal. Transparency and skepticism should be reserved only for some — specifically, Republicans. When reporting on the Obama administration’s fiscally irresponsible $18 million redesign of Recovery.gov, Sunlight officials sought to quell criticism, writing at the time, “you can’t presume that the government isn’t spending its money wisely unless you know both what Government is paying and what they’re paying for. We don’t know what they’re paying for.”

But Sunlight presumed to know exactly what the RNC’s web development expenditures were for, presumably because their targets were, well, Republicans.

Crossposted at Red State and Skepticians.com.

First it was the Senate - now, Eric Cantor, and the House Minority Whip's online team spearheaded by Matt Lira are taking the GOP message on health care reform to YouTube.

Today's video news release features congressional doctors who oppose the President's health care reform bill that is making its way through Congress right now.

Here is the office's official statement on the goal of this video release.

Today, the Office of the Republican Whip launched a video news release featuring Republican Doctors in the U.S. House; these doctors have spent decades providing medical care to patients and share real concerns about legislation designed to increase government's role in health care.  Instead, they support common-sense reform that lowers costs, improves access to needed care, and strengthens the doctor/patient relationship.

I appreciate this video, because it is well produced and conveys a strong message.  While it may be a bit long, the congressmen are speaking directly into the camera and don't seem overly scripted.

You can watch the video and read the official blog post here.

The Republican National Committee will unveil a new website early Tuesday morning that promises to increase grassroots participation and offers improved navigability and smarter marketing and fundraising tools for the GOP, according to party officials.

Upon reaching the new GOP.com, RNC Chairman Michael Steele takes a virtual step onto the computer screen and leads users on a tour of the site’s new features.

“Notice anything different?” asks Steele. “It’s the new GOP.com. It’s a forward-looking, open-platform for the party of new ideas. If you’re a Republican activist, this is your space.”

The developers of the new website hope to capitalize on the organic activism that gave way to Tea Parties across the nation by “creating a larger, more informed, more organized, and more energized Republican community.”

Conscious of the propensity for online social networking to mobilize activists, the new website was designed with an unmistakable attentiveness to social media, having devoted a significant portion of the landing page’s real estate to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

At first glance, the RNC’s new digital threads look nothing like a typical political website. From the dynamic logo featuring user-submitted pictures of supporters to the refreshingly simple navigation menu, the revamped and reorganized GOP web presence represents a commonly-preached but rarely-practiced belief on Capitol Hill: that the best ideas come from outside the Beltway.

Said one RNC official familiar with the project: “We tried to break the mold here. None of the firms we hired have ever worked in politics.”

In addition to seamlessly incorporating prominent social networks like Facebook and Twitter into their new platform, the RNC also revised their now-defunct in-house social network, myGOP. Renamed to represent Steele’s embrace of organic activism and community engagement, their new social network, dubbed “OurGOP,” allows users to organize by location, issue, or candidate slate.

And as a supplement to the new “you-centric” social network, RNC officials note an additional innovative feature: users can securely login with third-party credentials, including OpenID and Facebook rather than creating a new account.

The new website is the latest aspect of Steele’s comprehensive rebranding campaign for the GOP, who weathered two consecutive election-year losses in 2006 and 2008. The 2010 midterm elections, Steele hopes, will be different. And that difference will be fostered by surging online conservative activism.

“At GOP.com something new is happening. And that something is you,” said Steele in his video introduction.

Crossposted from Redstate.

Today, the RNC announced a new initiative to showcase Republican support across the country by collecting supporter's photos and 128-character responses to this statement:

"I am a Republican because..."

Many faces will be featured on the new, and long-awaited, GOP.com.

If you want to throw your face into the ring, all you need to do is fill out this form and click submit.

The form asks for your various social networking handles - Facebook, Twitter, and Blog URL, which leads me to believe that this project will be an integrated approach to highlighting individual voter's stories online.

What's your story?

For GOP, Revenge is Tweet

Congressional Republicans may be struggling to communicate a coherent message above the angry din generated by town hall protests, Rep. Joe Wilson’s scream and conservative talkers, but a new study finds it’s not for lack of tweeting.

Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats have accounts on the social networking platform Twitter (101 compared with 57), and the GOP dominates Twitter usage by an even wider margin, according to a report released this week by the Congressional Research Service that analyzed two weeklong periods in July and August.

Report: Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get ReTweeted on Twitter

If I wanted make sure this post did not go viral--according to the standards put forth by Hubspot viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella in "The Science of Retweeting"--I could promote it on Twitter by posting something like this:

was bored watchin the game on tv and saw this thing about RTs...made me lol after i had really bad stomach cramps

Note the lack of punctuation, the use of of slang and abbreviations, the limited vocabulary, and the awkward overshare--all traits that Zarrella can now definititively say would turn Twitter users off. How? Because the avid Twitter-er and author of the upcoming The Social Media Marketing Book spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets (which are usually symbolized with an "RT" on Twitter). He noted when they were posted, which words they used, whether or not they included links, and more. 

Who Has the Most Twitter Clout in Congress?

Wondering which Members of Congress have clout? Not the kind that gets legislation passed or stopped, but the kind that turns heads online? Well, with the help of our friends at Klout.com, we've taken a look at 81 Members of Congress who have been active Twitter users over the last year, and the results may surprise you.

Right now, according to Klout's analysis, which weighs 25 different variables in assigning a score to a Twitter user, no Member of Congress has more Klout than none other than  Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina.

Today I encountered one of the most refreshing, down-to-earth politicians I have ever met. Jason Chaffetz (Rep. 3rd District, Utah) spoke completely transparent and without pretense at the Heritage Foundation today. He impressed me with his desire to have a tight budget and low spending during his campaign for Congress in 2008, even despite overwhelming odds against a winning campaign. Chaffetz ran against RNC-backed Chris Cannon and won while spending about 1/6 of the money. Chaffetz said he made the decision to run against Cannon because, "he failed us (Republicans) for not instituting conservative principles in campaign finance and sticking to limited spending."

Chaffets attributes his election to his online presence, use of social media and personal calls and visits. He told of a time he drove an hour and a half to visit with three people. "I was willing to do things most people weren't," Chaffetz said. 

In regards to social media, he says too many members in the House are afraid of Facebook and Twitter. That's what I appreciated most about Chaffetz today: He didn't seem to have much of a filter when talking. You could tell he wasn't thinking, "how is this going to sound?," or "is this politically correct?" He was raw, yet well spoken. "You have to be comfortable with who you are," Chaffetz said today in response to a question regarding his succesful popularity. 

He also commented that the managment of a politican's Twitter and Facebook accounts "are not staff jobs, once people recognize it's you, well, they like that." I agree, there's nothing more frustrating than having a conversation with a ghostwriter. Chaffetz personally sends his facebook fans happy birthday messages. He said it communicates care not only to the individual, but also to the 500 potential others who may see it.

His website www.Chaffetz.house.gov is extremely fun and interactive with many videos. There are chances to personally contact Chaffetz, follow him on Twitter  or become his facebook fan. (He expressed disappointment with facebook's policy of a 5,000 friend cap on a profile because he feels his fan page doesn't allow him the personal touch his profile once did). On his website there's even a mini-series called "The Freshman" that documents Chaffetz's first year in Congress.

If I lived in Utah I'd vote for him. In fact, I hope his honest grassroots efforts will proliferate in Congress and inspire more young and truly conservative politicians.