A little over a year ago, I wrote a deservedly unkind and undeservedly lengthy post about John McCain's social network-in-name-only. It's essentially just a personalized donation page, glorified by its socnet-ish name: McCainSpace. Or MyMcCain. That part hadn't been sorted out by its launch.

In any case, that was then. I hadn't been back since (who thought back then there would be a McCain campaign right now?) and recently decided that a follow-up might be in order. So what is it now?

It's exactly the same. The McCain campaign website doesn't seem to have much interest in making their website into a real destination. As I said then, a campaign does not need a social network of its own, but if you're going to claim one, actually have one.

Actually, something has changed with the profile I used to illustrate the problem last year. It's Debaser, the Un Chien Andalou/Black Francis-inspired username of Todd Zeigler at Bivings Group. Here's the image I posted last year:

The page is unchanged, with one exception. Here's the detail:

Granted, $100 is not a lot, for a presidential campaign or the fourteen months between the first screen shot and the second. But for a website that's essentially abandoned, it's a fortune.

I asked Zeigler if he had donated, or knew who had. The first word of his reply: "Weird." Zeigler logged in and found out that the donor hailed from the Delmarva Peninsula and was not known to him. In an e-mail reply he allowed me to share, Zeigler offered two possibilities:

(1) [Name Redacted] stumbled across my page (or blog post) and gave through it.

(2) Funny business.

I'm going with (1) but for Debaser to reach its assigned goal, (2) may have to get involved.

Cross-posted from Blog P.I.

Todd Zeigler has an excellent post previewing his participation at the IPDI Politics Online Conference next week on whether "good" design matters. (Note: Register for the conference here.)

In his post, Zeigler walks us through their implementation of the red truck promotion for Fred Thompson's campaign.

His conclusion is worth noting:

Both versions of the truck worked equally well, as the Fredheads surpassed every online fundraising goal the Thompson campaign set. The simple truck did just as well as the fancier one. And while the simple version was homely, it was very usable and got the idea across well. The power was in the idea and the timing (which is always vital with these things), not in how professionally it was implemented. This was definitely a case that proves the old George Patton quote: “A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

Great insight. Thanks for sharing Todd.