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Clinton is in, and blogging will play a crucial part in her campaign

Cnn wrote yesterday that Sen. Hillary Clinton jumped into the fray as a 2008 presidential candidate with the words "I'm in" posted on her Web site. Today Todd Zeigler of the Bivings Report notes that Senator Clinton's campaign website reflects that the candidate understands that markets are conversations.

"The tagline 'Let the Conversation Begin' is plastered all over her site and she begins her annoucement video with this quote: 'I’m not just starting a campaign, I’m beginning a conversation',” Ziegler writes.

Despite these promising words the Clinton campaign has not yet released the blog that is integrated in the campaigns website. The site’s blog apparently isn’t ready yet, but Clinton is asking users to write posts on their own blogs sharing “your ideas on how we can work together for change.”

"Soon we’ll launch the official blog of HillaryClinton.com, a crucial part of our exciting national conversation about the direction of our country and the place to go to learn more about Hillary. We know our readers are going to have a lot to say, so we want to give you the first word," it says on the website.

Todd Zeigler has this to say about Clinton's blog ideas:

"I guess the Clinton campaign will pick the best entry and highlight that as their first blog post. This is sort of a clever idea. If it works, Clinton will get a bunch of bloggers writing lover letters to her on their own sites in an effort to win the contest. How viral. Not sure many political bloggers will take the bait though.","

Read more about the features of Clinton's Campaign Website on The Bivings Report.

Update:

Hillary Reaches Out Thru Web Chat

Directed by you, starring Barack Obama

In a recent e-mail I recieved from John Larue, Deputy Director of Communications for Students for Barack Obama, he tells me that although their user-submitted video contest did not go as well as they had hoped (the contest was have users submit videos convincing Obama to run for the presidency), he hopes to have another one soon. While I question the effectivenss that such a contest will have, I fully support John and the other Obamaniacs as they take new ideas and attempt to use them for their own purposes.Even the official Barack Obama machine has started doing a lot of work with user-created video (perhaps inspired by their student supporters?). As blogs become slightly passe (or if not passe, then at least the standard) in the political sphere, it will take people like John Larue and B.O.'s team to take advantage of new modes of communication. Nine times out of ten, nothing will come of it. But that one time it works will be well worth the effort on the failed iniatives.

New study by Pew: 14 Million Online Political Activists in 2006

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is releasing yet another of its ongoing reports tracking Americans' use of the Internet, and according to Personal Democracy Forum (who were leaked an advance copy of the study) the report contains some really important news about the number of Internet users who utilized blogs to contribute to political discussion in 2006:

More than 60 million people (31% of all Americans online) say they were online during the 2006 campaign to get information about candidates and/or exchange views via email.

...and...

By far the most interesting discovery from their survey: 23% of campaign internet users has either posted their own political commentary to the web via a blog, site or newsgroup (8%); forwarded or posted someone else's commentary (13%); created political audio or video (1%); forwarded someone else's audio or video (8%). "That translates into about 14 million people who were using the 'read-write Web' to contribute to political discussion and activity," the study's authors Lee Rainie and John Horrigan write.

The advanced copy can be read in  full on this link.

Update:

and here is the link to the final report by Pew: Election 2006 Online

"Choose Smoking," they say

Since I've been back in Canada, I've spent a lot of time reading the newspaper to catch up on what I've missed in the past few years. One of the most recent developments here (as in many other places in the world) is the ban of smoking in public places. While I'm not a smoker, I support the cause as championed by MyChoice, a lobby-group paid for by the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council. Their site might not exactly be a blog, but it contains many of the same features such as an ability for users to make comments on the site's frequently-updated posts. The page is cleanly designed and well written, and will make for a succesful tool except for one thing: To view most of the site's material, a user is required to register and login. A casual viewer will probably not care enough to do this, and will simply move onto the next thing. The very reason for having an information-dispersing website is that users can quickly access it and find out what they need to know. Its certainly a good idea to have some sort of registration system, but don't make it mandatory. The only reason I can imagine for having such a login-measure is because the topic is tobacco, and there might be government regulations requiring a login to prevent undeage users from visiting the site.In the meantime, keep fighting the good fight, MyChoice.

A Touch of Northern Blogging

Now that I am back in my homeland, I thought I'd try and familiarize myself the local PR climate by talking about a few Canadian blogs (all of which can be found on the New PR Wiki ).First up is the blog of Elliot Noss, who is in a leadership position at Canada's Tucows. Despite the fact that the company is in the business of web-related software, I was quite disapointed by Noss' blog. It appears to be sloppy, and hastily written. Perhaps if it was meant for the consumption only by him and his immediate colleagues it would not be too bad. However, if I was with Tucows, I would not be happy at having him represent my company online. Surely somone could take a bit more time and create a more relevant and readable blog. The next blog that I looked at was that of Warren Bickford, who is involved with the International Association of Business Communicators. I'm not exactly sure what they do, but apparently Bickford started blogging on April 6 (my birthday) so that's good enough for me. His blog is simple and clean, which makes for easy reading. While it seems to be very geared towards the public speaking industry, it is still quite readable. This, and the fact the Bickford seems to be quite skilled at creating commentary about his side, shows us that the man is indeed a real communicator. We can learn from him.

Huffington Post aims to host Web debates in U.S. race

The SignOnSanDiego.com reports that one of the most widely read U.S. political blogs, The Huffington Post, is inviting candidates for the 2008 presidential election to hold an online debate, a first that would confirm the Internet's reach and influence.

The blogs founder, the highly profiled Arianna Huffingtion, said in a recent interview with Reuters that she has contacted Democratic and Republican party officials about organizing a debate for each side. Huffington also claimed that the line between established media and independent blogs would blur as the 2008 poll neared.

“2008 is going to be critical in terms of the coverage of the election,” Huffington said. “We are working to put together the first primary online debate among candidates and working out the logistics of how this is going to happen,” said Huffington to Reuters.

The debate will most likely be streamed via video.

 

(HuffingtonPost.com was the second most popular political blog site in December, according to tracking firm Hitwise. It attracts more than 3 million unique visitors each month.)

No blog on Romney’s campaign website

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently launched his new campaign website. The website does not include a blog and Todd Zeigler of The Bivings Report isn’t too impressed:

The site doesn’t include a blog or any way to have a conversation online with the candidate/campaign. There are tools that encourage users to join the campaign, donate money and sign up friends for campaign updates. In other words, they have features that allow you to participate in the campaign in very focused ways, but not in the messy, Web 2.0 manner of the John Edwards campaign. No Facebook group. No MySpace profile. No link to their YouTube account. It’s as if the last few years never happened.

Conclusion:

Based on how they are using YouTube and podcasts for crisis response, it is clear that the Romney campaign has an understanding of how to use the web in this day and age. Unfortunately this understanding isn’t evident from the first version of their campaign website.

Peter Daou's Power Triangle

Peter Daou’s explanaton of the power and limitations of blogs through a triangular relationship between blogs, media, and the political establishment really interests me.

In an essay published in the Daou Report, September 2005, Daou asks the question (as so many have before him): How influential are bloggers?

Daou has realized that there is no consensus surrounding the metrics that can be used to measure influence. He also knows that we do not  have a clear understanding of what exactly can be defined as ‘influence’.

According to Daou:

‘It might be easier to approach the question by setting a more specific, and admittedly somewhat arbitrary, definition of political influence: the capacity to alter or create conventional wisdom. And a working definition of “conventional wisdom” is a widely held belief on which most people act. Finally, by “people” I mean all Americans, regardless of ideology or political participation.’

Daou further explains that forming a triangle of blogs, media, and the political establishment is an essential step if we want to understand the power and influence that blogs can have.

‘Looking at the political landscape, one proposition seems unambiguous: blog power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment.’

‘Simply put, without the participation of the media and the political establishment, the netroots alone cannot generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom’.

‘This is partly a factor of audience size, but it’s also a matter, frankly, of trust and legitimacy. Despite the astronomical growth of the netroots, and the slow and steady encroachment of bloggers on the hallowed turf of Washington’s opinion-makers, it is still the Russerts and Broders and Gergens and Finemans, the WSJ, WaPo and NYT editorial pages, the cable nets, Stewart and Letterman and Leno, and senior elected officials, who play a pivotal role in shaping people’s political views. That is not to say that blogs can’t be the first to draw attention to an issue, as they often do, but the half-life of an online buzz can be measured in days and weeks, and even when a story has enough netroots momentum to float around for months, it will have little effect on the wider public discourse without the other sides of the triangle in place,’ Daou writes.

The view Daou presents in the essay is a very interesting one, and it is worth reading the piece in its full length. Personally I hope we will hear more about what Daou has to say about his concept and how this affects the position he holds as a blog advisor for Hillary Clinton.

Myths and Realities about the midterm election

Time.com, Nov. 16. 2006 MYTH: Joe Lieberman's victory proves the netroots don't matter. REALITY: The netroots had some key victories.

Liberal bloggers and their readers helped to swing the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary to anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, raising expectations that the midterms would turn this new generation of online activists into kingmakers. Yet in the midst of a Democratic wave, the netroots candidates failed to sweep, causing some pundits to claim that the netroots' influence continues to be overstated: "The Netroots Election? Not So Fast," editorialized The Nation. When Rick Perlstein tried, in The New Republic, to claim the election as a netroots triumph, Ryan Lizza replied in the magazine's blog that in addition to having the netroots' support, winning candidates also had the national Democratic party to thank, as it "dumped tons of money, strategic advice, and fundraising assistance into their races." What's the real takeaway? Of the 19 candidates that three of the biggest liberal blogs (Daily Kos, mydd.com and Swing State Project) raised money for, eight of the candidates won. This improves on the blogs' record from 2004, when Daily Kos picked out 16 campaigns to strongly support and raise money for, all of which lost. This cycle, bloggers may have been most strongly linked to Lamont, but they actually donated more money to Jim Webb of Virginia. Bloggers also made "macaca" into a scandal that helped sink Webb's opponent, George Allen. The netroots' record is probably too short to be judged definitively, but instead of looking at pure win/loss records, an examination of where the netroots put their emphasis suggests that the online community is either becoming more sophisticated in picking its candidates or is helping push long shots over the top.

The discussion continues in The QuandO Blog , which again leads us to an interesting essay in the Daou Report, by Peter Daou, currently a blog advisor for Senator Hillary Clinton, discussing the power and limitations of blogs.

Person of the Year: Not Rob Killick

Rob Killick on Time's announcement  of The Person of the Year: Time also claims that leadership in the sense that Thomas Carlyle described it as ‘the biography of great men’ has been undermined by Web 2.0. While it is always possible to overemphasise the roles of individuals in history, the claim that ‘you’ or ‘me’ are as influential as Hitler or Churchill in shaping events is fanciful. Individual leaders come to the fore as the most dynamic exemplars of the movements or governments they lead. They are the ones that people expect to lead them towards whichever goals they wish to achieve. Of course, leaders need followers. It is the energy, commitment and conviction of the followers which make things happen, not the leaders. The absence of great leaders today is not a step forward for democracy but a reflection of the weakness of political life.

The point is that today’s bloggers are entirely the opposite of past generations of activists and democrats. They are, by definition, sedentary rather than active, individualised rather then collective, and intellectually disparate rather than united.

Where is the evidence that this supposed revolution is changing the world? Have poverty and disease been abolished? Is the political world more enlightened or the economy more dynamic as a result?

If writing to each other defines participation in the democratic process, telling the world your private thoughts makes up a revolution, and filming your iguana is an act of global leadership, then we can expect little improvement in the real world.

I believe Mr Killick might have misunderstood the use of the term 'revolution' in the way Lev Grossman of Time uses it in the Person of the Year article. It also seems like Mr Killick have missed the point about how collaborative blogging can drive change. 

 And is it just me, or is the view Mr Killick expresses on democratic change absurd?

Vlogs vs blogs

According to Tom Zeigler of The Bivings Report, video blogging plays more to candidate's strengths than regular blogging does. 'During the 2006 cycle, lots of campaigns had staffers blogging but very few candidates wrote blog entries themselves. I think it is difficult for candidates to find the time to blog. And even if they do find the time, rarely can a candidate pull off the right tone. Blogging well requires a serious time investment. It’s just not a good fit for candidates. Better to have a staffer or consultant do it.

Video blogging, on the other hand, plays to candidate’s strengths. They meet and connect with voters every day. Video blogging is a natural extension of that skill. Bill Clinton would have made a great video blogger,'writes Zeigler.

We have earlier discussed the release of David Cameron's video blog, and are now seing more of the American politicians utilizing this tool (Tom Vilsack is one of them, and an example of how he uses the vlog can be found in the Bivings Report article). 

I believe that when John Edwards recently announced his candidacy for President on YouTube,  a point was made about how interested candidates are and, will be, to reach the growing YouTube-generation in the run-up to the 2008 election.

Find your local political blogs

If all politics is local, then locally-focused blogs are obviously important to anyone engaged in politics. But since the internet doesn't come with zipcodes attached to urls, it's not obvious how to discover these nodes of conversation and community? How to find blogs that are local hubs? Personal Democracy Forum informs you on how to find  local political blogs (The article does only refer to US blogs, unfortunately).

House Web Log Utility

From FCW.com: Joining the blogosphere just got even easier for members of Congress. The House Administration Committee is offering the House Web Log Utility to allow offices to blog using their official Web sites.

House members have been blogging since 2004, but the new tool allows any office to develop and manage a page on its official Web site. Staff members may post information, which Web site visitors can comment on. Each office must assign one staff member to administer the blog, according to a letter distributed to members.

Read more about the new House blog tool on FCW.com, The Techweb Blog and Beltway Blogroll

Monday's USA Today - Online Money

Well, its almost the holidays so hopefully I can be forgiven for posting about a USA Today article from their Monday edition. What is important to note is the statistics that are provided, notably that 42% of 'web-based activists' have an annual income of more than $75,000, quite contrary to the stereotype that most bloggers (as someone said of Tom DeLay) are unemployed losers. Of course, the article also points out that the web is being used as a fundraising tool. While this is all well and good for political campaigns, I am interested in knowing how this can be turned around to work for corporations (beyond a simply buy-online strategy).

Lastly, the quote from Carol Carr (director of the institute for Politics, Democracy & The Internet at George Washington University) that "The Internet tends to benefit the mavericks who have a compelling message" sums up a lot of what we have been trying to say here. We are much more likely to analyse a candidate/organizations message online, than we are if we get a simple sound bite. Those that are thinking will make the cut, while those that are simply a media-friendly face will be left in the dust.

Jerome Armstrong talks to PDF about the lessons learned from the Warner Campaign

From Personal Democracy Forum: For years, Jerome Armstrong has been at the forefront of tech-politics, starting the ur-liberal blog MyDD.com (which spawned DailyKos.com, among others), advising the early Dean campaign, and in 2005 joining Gov. Mark Warner's nascent presidential bid as a senior IT staffer. After Warner announced that he was not running for president, we asked Armstrong to debrief on what he learned planning for the 2008 campaign.

Read the entire interview on Personal Democracy Forum.

BAM! (Barack OBAMA, that is)

Those lucky dogs down at The Bivings Report apparently got an e-mail from the guy that started the whole Barack Obama-Facebook initiative. Although it is difficult to determine how much success this will actually translate into, 24,000 Facebook supporters is nothing to scoff at. However, Todd at Bivings makes the important point that this kind of support is probably only possible through grassroots activities. Politicians attempting to sow their own Facebook seed will probably come off as insincere hornblowers. This is the exact line that PR practitioners need to watch out for: shameless self-promotion (see Tom Delay) vs. creating positive awareness.

Buying the Second Life Hype

Alright, I admit, I've bought into the Second Life hype that Techdirt reports is exactly that: hype. While I am optimistic that online/virtual places like Second Life have the potential to provide new forums for information exchange and discussion, it seems that their time has not yet come. It looks like if a campaign wants to make more of an impact than simple hype, its going to have to be in WoW. The only problem is that I can't really see any politician or marketing executive wanting to tie their image to that of a Night Elf or Orc.

On the other hand, maybe its the next best option for Tom DeLay.