GOP Hub was launched by Jonathan Cornwell at the beginning of July 2007, and earned the label "Revolutionary" from techRepublican founder David All. Since then we have done what we could to build a small community among conservative bloggers, but our growth was limited by the fact that we were just a niche alternative to Digg and Reddit and did not offer anything unique. Our recent partnership with Evanston, IL-based startup Neokast, provider of HD-quality live video streaming without buffering, allows us to assert quite confidently that GOP Hub now offers the Republican Party a truly disruptive technology.

Neokast's technology operates on the most sophisticated P2P software in the world, which was developed by a Northwestern Ph.D. candidate. It made its public debut at the Video on the Internet conference and was greeted with rave reviews from some of the internet's most respected enthusiasts (see links to reviews below). Neokast describes itself as,

The Neokast Stream Server is a professional solution for creating
broadcast channels of real-time live multimedia or scheduled content
from file. It is ideal for broadcasting live events and supporting one
or more channels of continuously streamed video.

Neokast is a technology enabler. The unrivalled scalability of
the Neokast technology combined with its professional-grade
functionality and ease of use can turn creative ideas into profitable
business models.

Essentially YouTube on steroids, GOP Hub's streaming video network will offer GOP candidates across the country the opportunity to utilize our consulting services to build their own channels of 24/7 content on their own campaign website for a very reasonable cost, especially considering what they pay for a few seconds of time on the local news. We hope to use the revenue generated by this highly personalized campaign consulting to build a truly advanced production platform that will empower conservative activists and bloggers around the country to build their own channels hosted on GOP Hub free of charge. We are currently seeking to establish relationships with content producers, whether bloggers, journalists, students or campaign managers nationwide who would provide live, on-site streams of each candidate as they make speeches, kiss babies and "press the flesh", as they say.

At the moment we are trying to wrap our heads around the technology to ensure that we package the content in the most effective way possible. We hope to use the primaries as a Beta phase for the general election, so please send your questions, comments and proposals for new channels. UStream is a useful tool, as noted on techRepublican a few days ago, and for those in the blogosphere who do not
have access to a digital video camera or a high-speed broadband
connection, we strongly recommend utilizing UStream's livecast
technology to broadcast their opinion.

You will notice that we have included a Slatecard widget with all of the GOP presidential candidates, as we agree wholeheartedly with David All that he too has a "Revolutionary" technology to offer GOP candidates in the 21st century. Another fun new widget that I encountered recently is from circaVie, an application that makes it quick and easy to create a dynamic and multimedia rich timeline, which I used to plot the post-primary victory and concession speeches from the candidates in both parties. Other widgets used in this Beta experiment include Twitter and Google's Election 2008 gadget, which includes tabbed feeds from YouTube, Google News, Google Blog Search and Google Maps, on all of the candidates.

Neokast Links

I Cringley, The Pulpit (PBS.com)- The $7 TV Network: Neokast brings multicasting to the masses

The Red Ferret: Neokast- set up your own internet television station in minutes

Neokast on the Technology Evangelist

NewTeeVee: Neokast, emerging from the shell

There's certainly some humor in this YouTube video. But could there also be some reality? Can we learn from those that create viral videos to possibly do it ourselves?

I've never created a "viral" video but I'd like to.

Back in January, I posted a few fun videos anonymously as an experiment in the ability to manipulate traffic through tagging and titles that I whipped up with Microsoft MovieMaker and the campaign announcement videos of Barack and Hillary. The videos "stole" about 30k total views from the intended announcement videos by confusing both YouTube and YouTube users and proved my theory that it would work.

But how do you create a viral video? A video that gets hundreds of thousands or millions of views for a national election.

There is a formula. Or so I deduce through my observations and have been told by my friend Phil de Vellis who created the Vote Different anti-Hillary Clinton viral video last year which is now over 4 million views on YouTube.

In my opinion, the three key ingredients to creating a viral video are:
* message/timing,
* skill/cleverness, and
* effective distribution/luck.

MESSAGE/TIMING
The recipe for a viral video involves perfectly defining the narrative of a candidate which everyone is thinking but no one is saying through moving images and a message. The message must be perfect in every way, or it will die. It must be timed perfectly to get carried in the stream.

SKILL/CLEVERNESS
Viral videos aren't always *perfectly* edited, but they are. They may look amateurish, but they're not. There's something about most viral videos that when you watch them, you say both, "I could do that... but I could never do that." We assume that it's simple when really it's complex. That's the beauty of a viral video.

It's seemingly a video that we could have produced, but in reality, someone else did (and we're OK with that). Video editors are artists. They take pride in their work and spend hours refining their masterpiece. Of course, it's also important not to be too clever. Always a delicate balance.

EFFECTIVE DISTRIBUTION/LUCK
Phil de Vellis emailed his video to a "few bloggers." From there it spread like wildfire on its own merits. The point is that you need eyeballs and to get those you need the right influential folks to see the video, find it interesting, and then send it along to their network or post it on their blog. Of course, some of those influencers are people like Matt Drudge at the Drudge Report, but Drudge isn't exactly looking to promote your video. And even if he did, it's not always a guaranteed hit. Throw one big handful of spaghetti at the wall and keep throwing.

So what have we learned? Well, certainly nothing that you didn't already know. Standard communication 101: message, audience, medium, distribution...

But still, something to think about moving forward toward a General Election.

What are your thoughts? What ingredients am I missing?

Sarah Lai Stirland of Wired reports on a viral video quickly making the rounds, titled, "The Shocking Video Hillary Does NOT Want You To See!"

Watch it:

Here's an excerpt from Stirland's piece:

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the latest to feel the sting from a small but growing demographic that could have an outsized impact on the presidential race: people who've had bad experiences with a candidate, and who know how to use YouTube.

At issue is a 13-minute preview video co-produced by Peter Paul, a convicted felon and one-time donor to Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, who's now turned against Clinton in her presidential run.

Titled The Shocking Video Hillary Does NOT Want You To See!, the video has been viewed on YouTube almost 177,000 times. On Google Video, where it first appeared, it's scored nearly 863,000 hits since it went online mid-July. On Thursday, it was the most viewed clip on the site, boasting 73,000 views, as well as the most e-mailed. The video was one of the most popular items on the news-recommendation site Digg last week, generating more than 4,000 "diggs," and putting it just behind the news that Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert plans to run for president, sort of.

Paul calls all this the "truth-boating" of Clinton's campaign, alluding to the notorious 2004 advertising campaign against Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry by the self-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "soft money" committee.

"It's a viral example of a story hidden by the media since I started whistle-blowing in 2001," says Paul in an interview. "It's up to the people on the internet to break the media embargo ... on the evidence that the people are entitled to have."

This is good. Share this with every Republican you know.