Barbera responds: College Republicans investing in success, College Democrats should try grown-up politics, CR Nation. 

On Aug. 27 we deployed a team of 50 full-time field representatives who are on college campuses around the country every day recruiting new members for the College Republicans and channeling those recruits into volunteer efforts. In the few weeks the team has been in the field, they have already recruited 46,875 new members. The field representative for the state of New Mexico has recruited 969 new members this month, including 297 at UNM alone.

Study: Omitting cell phone users may affect polls, Newsweek.

The finding, in a report this week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, may increase pressure on polling organizations to include people who use only cell phones in their surveys. While many major polls including The Associated Press-GfK Poll already interview cell phone users, some do not, largely because doing so is more expensive.

Palin Hacker Identified? Claims E-mails Are Proof Palin Did No Wrong, The Jawa Report.

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family ....

Obama's Spanish ad is deeply dishonest, Internet Scofflaw. 

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has launched a new Spanish-language TV ad that seeks to paint Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as anti-immigrant, even tying the Republican to his longtime conservative talk-radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh. . .

College Students Drive Change in Internet and Mobile Usage, Market Watch.

Students are key drivers of change. They brought social networks into the mainstream, and now they are watching video online. They demand access to friends and information whenever they want and wherever they are.

Twitter is Growing Like Crazy: Up 422% in 12 Months, Mashable.

The latest numbers are in, and Twitter is apparently growing at a torrid pace. According to stats just released from Nielsen Online, Twitter recorded 2.3 million unique visitors in August (US-only), an increase of 422% from the same period last year.

Creating a Facebook for Development, Private Sector Development Blog.

Thus enters Business Fights Poverty , a website that aims to connect professionals who work on the business side of international development.

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.

Today, a few of us are at the Lunch 2.0 + New Politics Institute two-hour conversation/lunch at the Phoenix Park Hotel in Washington, DC on social networking in the political space. (More details at the Lunch 2.0 DC facebook group.)

My friend Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs is live-streaming through UStream and you can used to be able to watch it live here.

Should have some thoughts after the session.

UPDATE 8:44 PM: Finishing up an Internet training workshop at the Leadership Institute. I spoke about the wonderful world of YouTube, Andy Roth of the Club For Growth is talking about the work they do to effectively get a message out, and Soren Dayton is on deck.

Regarding the social networking discussion today I wasn't overwhelmed.

I think that Peter Leyden of the New Politics Institute, which is the liberal organization that hosted the discussion, is a great speaker and has some really ground-breaking and interesting things to say about tech + politics. [Sample interview]

The only problem was that Peter didn't really speak, but simply played the role of the moderator. Ah well.

Don't misunderstand me. The rest of the panel was certainly filled with effective communicators who added value to the discussion and play major roles in the space, but I didn't really learn anything. Know what I mean?

Pretty sure Joe and I were the only Republicans in the room. Am I wrong?

Last night, Unity08 sent an alert explaining the differences between Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Myspace and descriping the concept of social networking.

The power of social networking is quite amazing. In a very short amount of time, you can be virtually connected with millions of people. At Unity08, we use our social network profiles to help us connect with others that are interested in learning more about us.

Please take 10 minutes this week to check out (and/or join) our social networks!

If you are already part of the social networks below, then make sure you add us as a "friend" or that you subscribe to our channel. If you are not on the networks below, please consider joining or subscribing.

YouTube allows you to upload, view and share video clips.
Subscribe to our video channel now!

Flickr is a photo sharing web site.
Join our flickr group now!

Facebook: Join or sign in, then search for "Unity08" to find our application.
Click here to join or sign in to Facebook!

MySpace is an interactive network of friends.
Click here to add Unity08 as a friend on MySpace!

How does this help us? By joining a social network and adding us as a friend or subscribing to a group or channel, you help us to be seen by more people. Joining our network makes it easy for you to meet other Unity08 members and to pass along our profile to your friends!

We'll see you online!

At first I thought that the alert was a waste of time. Why do users need to be educated about social networks? Aren't we already on them? Then Facebook statistics came to mind.

Social networking isn't for kids anymore. According to Facebook, by the end of 2007, Facebook will be up to 60 million users, and 75% will be out of college. With 65% of people 50-64 going online, and 32% of the 65+ crowd venturing onto the web, it's worth recruiting them. The adoption curve is moving toward older audiences, and we need to change perceptions that web stuff is for crazy college students.

On August 29, I helped organize the Conservative Modern Media Strategies Workshop in Washington, DC.

I spoke about the importance of effectively using social networks like myspace and facebook on the campaign trail. Here's a YouTube video of my lesson:

The video follows this PowerPoint presentation which you can follow through pretty easily:

Some of the audio is a little light because I wasn't mic'd with a wireless and I tend to walk away from the podium, but you should be able to get through it.

Hope this is helpful.

Mike Allen of the Politico reports on a new study by the E-Voter Institute which confirms what we've known all along: The Internet is the modern campaign trail, and you need to be working it if you're a political candidate (if you want to connect with folks, that is).

You don’t have to be a blogger to be involved. A study to be released by the E-Voter Institute this afternoon found that heavy consumers of online political information have “high rates of activism” that include e-mailing friends and family about a candidate, contributing online and attending events in response to e-mail.

“We detect a trend here,” the authors report. “In the old days, activists had to go somewhere to show their interest in a candidate or cause — attend a rally or fundraiser, participate in a phone bank at a campaign office, write a check and drop it in the mail.”

Now, though, virtual activists in what the report calls “the new political landscape” are telling their MySpace and Facebook friends about campaign rallies and candidate positions.

“While candidates have focused on collecting e-mail addresses, we see the rise of the online social networks as a way for the peer-to-peer communications that grassroots activists strive for to get their messages out,” adds the study, which is called “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear: Change Is Accelerating in the Political Landscape.”

The only thing I'd change about this report is changing every use of the word "new" to "modern." How much longer can folks seriously call this stuff new?

Crossposted from Eyeon08.

So I went to accept a LinkedIn invitation. You’ll never guess from who. But, in any case, I get to the screen, and there is Barack Obama asking a question.

This strikes me as a pretty clever way to use LinkedIn. This is a crowd that, if you engage, can probably turn donor. And they are probably pretty well connected to other people. They are relatively wealthy. And, if someone responds, Obama can highlight answers. By answering, people take some ownership. Wiki-politics plus social networks. Very impressive.

A little discussion of why this is so clever. When you ask a question on LinkedIn, it appears to 3 degrees of seperation. There are 1.4m people within 3 degrees for me. That’s a lot of people. And they are relatively well targeted. After all, if someone responds, they are, by definition, a friend of a friend of a supporter. (and probably wealthy) If someone responds, you know which of your supporters to have work the guy over.

Rudy Giuliani, via Katie Harbath, also has a LinkedIn account, but so far they just offer "friendship"

I am consistently impressed by the way Obama uses social networks and technology

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