Twitterverse is Shocked, SHOCKED: Obama Admitted to Never Using Twitter

Those of us on the West Coast - or who stayed up extra late - were able to catch President Obama's town hall live on TV from China along with the accompanying Twitter chatter. There were some amazing nuggets from the town hall. It provided a genuine dialogue with the president, who opened up on his thoughts on everything from terrorism to the open Internet, but much of that will be lost in the Twitter streams the next day or so because Barack Obama admitted (*gasp*) that he has never used Twitter.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Live Tweeters

As Twitter evolves from a casual “What are you doing?” forum to a powerful marketing and advertising tool, live tweeting is the newest strategy being used to generate buzz around events and leverage publicity.

Posting tweets while attending an event, called live tweeting, is growing more popular by the day as a way to share information to people who can’t experience it first hand.

Examples of Bias in Conservapedia's Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

I can’t say that I spend much time thinking about Conservapedia, the creationist wiki created as a counterpoint to Wikipedia, but today I happened to find myself on the page titled “Examples of Bias in Wikipedia“. As you might expect, it’s a fun one.

@nansen says we need more conservatives at the top of this list and we here at TechRepublican agree...

Exploring the Political Twittersphere

Have you ever wondered how politicians use Twitter? Who are the most active politicians? Who do they follow, and who follows them? Who are the political strategists and media personalities that politicians follow? And within the political Twittersphere, who follows the most people, and who follows them?

To answer these questions, Sysomos took a deep look at how Twitter is emerging as a new and powerful political tool. We identified 168 of the most active political voices in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada.

HOW TO: Manage a Facebook Group

Facebook Pages may be taking the social network by storm, but they can take time and technical skill to set up. When you need to promote something quickly, or are looking to foster a stronger sense of community, the more traditional Facebook Group is often the way to go...

...However, the ease and speed with which a Group can be set up has created a lot of spammy or messy Groups that are slapped together in minutes and abandoned soon after. In order to break through the clutter and gain members, you need to take the time to set up a Group correctly. Here are a few tips -

And now, the scoop on writing retweetable tweets (say that 5 times fast)...

5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets

You’ve heard about “sticky content.” Back in the days of Web 1.0 it was what made folks stick around on your website. The idea was they would stay a while, read every word and then buy whatever you were selling. (This turned out to be a fallacy, but that’s a different post.) Microblogging demands that you create a different kind of content. Let’s call it “slippery.” That means 140-character bursts that are so compelling they slip away immediately and are repeated by those following you. And as everyone knows, the more you are retweeted, the more followers you get, as your bon mots are passed along from one person to another.

The Sustained Hunger to Know Sarah Palin

Given that we live in a time and a place where once-future sons-in-law of vice presidential nominees dish to Vanity Fair on intimate details of life in candidate's home, it strains the imagination that there is really that much that people want to know about Sarah Palin but don't already. But people are indeed voracious for information on Sarah Palin, according to Wikirank, a neat tool that charts how many people are reading a Wikipedia entry. (The data is pulled from Wikipedia's own server logs, so there's a very good chance it's accurate. But we only have data through the early days of September, so Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's recent creation of a PAC, for example, isn't going to be reflected in this particular chart.) Interest in Palin on Wikipedia crushes that of some of her possible 2012 Republican presidential rivals.

As They Say on Twitter: SEIU FAIL

In the past couple weeks, thousands of conservatives have taken to Twitter to say #handsoff and push for health care reform that leaves medical decisions in their hands and not the government’s. Now SEIU leaders are urging their members to tweet “Lewin Group FAIL” to Members of Congress on Twitter. FAIL being the ultimate dig on the social networking site. And by doing this they are showing that without a coherent health care message, they have shamefully resorted to attacking those who crunch economical models for a living. 

Taking Advantage of Wikipedia

How many nonprofits encourage their own staff to regularly edit and start new entries on Wikipedia about the issues they work on? I suspect not too many. Nonprofits should view Wikipedia as an excellent educational outlet to cite key facts about issues. By editing and starting an entry, your nonprofit staff gets to help frame the issues for Wikipedia readers and educate them. Note, when editing entries make sure you include accurate citations. If the edit is considered "controversial" consider tagging it with "request edit" to encourage Wikipedia users to review it. It's also important to remember that the community frowns up entries that are used to "get the word out" or may appear promotional or propaganda like.

Twitter Tips For Advocacy

I recently gave an interview for Studio 1080 on KUDO in Anchorage, AK about using Twitter for advocacy/marketing and wanted to share it with you. Here is the gist of the conversation...Why tweet?...If you are not on Twitter, you are not part of the conversations that
matter most to you and your cause, and you are missing the opportunity
to engage with the people who are most able to influence large segments
of the country and the key decision makers affecting your mission.

Report: Social Networks Growing While Other Social Media Sites Stagnate and Decline

Universal McCann has released a new report that looks at the state of social media today. Apparently, this trend is showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, it's still growing. From posting photos to writing blogs, the desire to share has become a universal phenomenon. However, the latest report shows that internet users are beginning to now center their digital life around social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, choosing to share their content within these sites instead of on services with a single focus, like Blogger or Flickr.

Words and Deeds: Wikipedia and the Virginia Governor's Race

The Democratic Party of Virginia settled on a nominee for governor this past week, choosing state senator Creigh Deeds over two better-known rivals, including former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe. (On the Republican side, Republican Bob McDonnell was unopposed for the nomination.) Following the race, Virginia blogger and Wikipedia contributor Waldo Jaquith posted about “Wikipedia’s role in Sen. Deeds’ nomination“, featuring quotes from a live discussion WashingtonPost.com.

Top 5 Twitter Trends to Watch

In this post we’ll examine how Twitter (Twitter) has changed the nature of search and created demand for real-time search engines. We’ll also explore why Verified Accounts matter, how savvy marketers are engineering Twitter trends, the nature of sponsored tweets and what’s to come, and the relevance of Twitter chat in third-party applications. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it encapsulates 5 important Twitter trends to keep your eye on right now.

Bringing Down Iran's State-Run Media

In light of the abundant Twittering and Facebooking happening this weekend in response to Iran's contested presidential election, an obvious question that has come up has to do with where and how the many engaged observers outside Iran can otherwise channel their considerable energies and interest. One answer tonight might involve a bit of cyber aggression aimed at the Iranian government.

Who is Encouraging Obama Supporters to Vandalize Sarah Palin's Wikipedia Article, blog, p.i.

As frequent readers know, I take vandalism of Wikipedia seriously, especially when it’s political in nature. So who would recommend such a thing? I googled his name, and this was the first result:

Obama's Hometown Donates $5 Million to McCain - The Lies About Sarah Palin, Political Republican Opinion.

The Political Republican Opinion blog has found a couple of interesting articles on the web that political Republicans should find quite interesting. The first article shows how John McCain is continuing to grow campaign financing for the Republican coffers. The second, points out the many lies being told by Liberal bloggers in their panicked efforts to degrade John McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate, Sarah Palin.

Readers of this blog have no need for another example of how much the Internet is changing political campaigns. The extent, however, that a candidates "Internet Reputation" affects their election is ultimately unmeasurable and as a result, overlooked.

That includes the candidate's Wikipedia profile. According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is the 8th most visited website in the US.

With some help from a friend (cough- William Beutler- cough) with greater expertise regarding Wikipedia, I recently acquired some Wikipedia statistics from the month of February for every Congressman in my home state of Indiana.

The number is how many times the page was viewed in February. The link is to the statistics.
429 -- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Pete_Visclosky
1042
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Baron_Hill
1069
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Steve_Buyer
1250
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Joe_Donnelly
1335
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Brad_Ellsworth
1873
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Mark_Souder
2419
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Andre_Carson
2456
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Mike_Pence
19648
-- http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Dan_Burton

Note that 5th District Congressman Dan Burton's profile saw an additional 17,500 views in February from January, a two-day spike as a result of the Clemens hearings.

For more even more enlightening detail, I pulled the chart below of Burton's Wikipedia traffic in the month of April. In April, Burton's Primary campaign was in full swing (election was May 5). The two big spikes came on April 14th and April 28th. On the 14th, Burton's opponent began his TV campaign. On the 28th, the Indianapolis Star ran an editorial about the race critical of Burton.

Sometimes a candidate can generate a buzz offline with a good Internet operation. But also, candidates need to keep in mind that they will generate online activity by offline actions. Offline campaign activities like direct mail blitzes, TV stories, and campaign commercials will result in additional searches on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo- both of which generally give Wikipedia top billing. You need to make sure that your voters are finding positive information.

Pay attention to Wikipedia- your voters are.

A note from Gabriela Schneider of the Sunlight Foundation alerts us about the launch of a new project which seeks to help provide more information about political candidates running for office:

We are launching something new over at Congresspedia.org this morning -- "Wiki the Vote," a project to build citizen-written profiles on each and every candidate for Congress in 2008.

The project is starting with nearly 300 basic profiles to be expanded and updated by citizens, journalists and even the campaigns themselves (or those of their opponents). Unlike Wikipedia, people connected to the subjects of articles are free to add to them as long as their contributions are rhetoric-free and comprised of fully documented, verifiable facts. The citizen editors are assisted and fact-checked by professional editors.

The first set of articles is based on confirmed candidates according to 2008racetracker.com and will eventually expand to cover every candidate on the ballot in the primary and general elections next year. When the OpenSecrets.org 2008 congressional campaign contributions database goes online in a few weeks, the candidate profiles will also display live feeds tracking the money race and who is funding it.

We often discuss new ways to make congressional data available on this list. It’s equally important to let citizens have access to user-friendly information about Congress. This project does that by turning data on earmarks, campaign contributions, etc. into narrative with information that citizens can use. Check out the site, and let me know what you think.

Check it out folks and start updating the members that you care about.