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Archive for the '#pdf2008' Category

Twitter Rapprochement: Personal Democracy Forum vs. Netroots Nation

Published by William Beutler on July 22, 2008 in #pdf2008, Blogs vs. MSM, Charts and Graphs, Democrats, Earned Media, Internet conferences, Netroots, Tech Blogosphere, Technology, Trend Tool, Twitter, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 1 Comment

While we’re running Twitter mentions of political blog conferences through Flaptor’s Twist, here’s Netroots Nation (#nn08) this weekend with Personal Democracy Forum (#pdf2008) two fortnights ago:

Twitter hashtags #pdf2008 and #nn08 via Twist by Flaptor.

Even at one day fewer (two if you don’t count #nn08’s low-key Sunday) the bipartisan-ish Personal Democracy Forum generated remarkably more Twitter noise than Netroots Nation, and apparently not much less in the rest of Internet news.

Netroots Nation had House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivering a speech on the main stage, certain to be covered by political reporters on the beat, but PdF had Arianna Huffington, arguably more Internet-famous than anyone in congressional leadership. The partisan nature of Netroots Nation probably attracted many from the substantial New-Old-New Left netroots movement, more than Personal Democracy Forum’s awkward mix of Obama-emboldened NYC progressives and McCain-indifferent DC conservatives. This despite the minor Twitter scuffle over Huffington’s imperious remarks.

It’s worth noting that NN’s location — Austin, Texas — is the same as SXSW (#sxsw) and its Interactive Festival, the locus of Twitter’s first widespread adoption in March 2007. On the other hand, PdF took place in midtown Manhattan, which by virtue of population and proximity surely has more Twitterinos (also, Tweeps) close by enough to at least tweet about not making it up/down.

But I think the best explanation for PdF’s modest Twitter supremacy is that, like SXSW and unlike NN, the audience it attracts is younger and more reliably tech-oriented. After all, the surveys show that liberal blog readers are older and primarily motivated by politics than the average Valley startup founder. One was first about tech, the other politics.

Meanwhile, the ever more ubiquitous micro-blogging service’s strong showing at the political conference probably bodes well for its long-term mass acceptance.

Assuming Twitter isn’t down, of course.

Portrait of the Smear Artists as an Old Boys’ Club

Published by William Beutler on July 3, 2008 in #pdf2008, Barack Obama, Charts and Graphs, Online Campaigns, Tech Blogosphere, Urban Legends, Web 2.0, Website Design, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Example of Obama’s Fight the Smears pageIt’s been a few weeks since Barack Obama’s presidential campaign unveiled its much-discussed Fight the Smears microsite. It’s certainly a daring move, and probably the right one. Although a cardinal rule of politics has long been “don’t repeat the charges against you,” there does reach a point where that no longer holds. John Kerry learned this the hard way, and Obama should get credit for adjusting accordingly.

One aspect I haven’t seen discussed in any great detail is the second page of the website, “Behind the Smears”. It’s not easily found — although it occupies the somewhat prominent last spot in the list of links at left, it’s also buried at the bottom of the page, below the main content and just above the site disclaimers.

The main content of said page is a chart showing the relationships between the accusers, and it looks like this:

Network of Obama “smears”

It’s pretty neat, but it’s also under-designed. After all, it seems to claim that the 1992 Clinton campaign itself is is smearing him, when all it means is that… actually, I’m not sure what it’s saying. What’s more, the lines are too light and don’t convey any specific information about how they are connected. There are a few small revisions which would make it more intuitive: a dotted line for lesser connections, or bigger names for those with more influence.

Relationship mapping is becoming a bigger deal in the blogosphere as more rigorous and even scholarly studies are done about the connections between blogs and attempts are made to quantify the influence one has upon another. This is driven in part by curiosity and in part by my own industry, where marketers are desperate to accurately quantify their impact. One example comes from Linkfluence, as demoed at Personal Democracy Forum this year:

Political blog map via Linkfluence

But how useful is this information? It’s nice to see a representation of the political ’sphere at the macro level. Some insights can certainly be derived therefrom, but it leaves a lot unsaid. For example, it doesn’t necessarily help me to know that one site has linked to another. I need to know why. I need to be able to drill down, and find out how they are arranged by a common link or keyword.

Don’t get me wrong, though: I’m all for pretty pictures.

And while the Obama campaign chart isn’t all that pretty and ultimately not that informative, it’s nevertheless a step in the right direction. The more and better tools a campaign can give to its online supporters, the more investment (in time as well as money) they are likely to make in turn.

Cerf’s Up: When Bipartisanship Really Isn’t

Published by William Beutler on June 30, 2008 in #pdf2008, Al Gore, Blog Consultants, Blog Fights, Democrats, Fundraising, Google, Hillary Clinton, Lobbying, Tech Blogosphere, Virginia Politics, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

At last week’s Personal Democracy Forum, one of the events I missed was the launch of a coalition called InternetforEveryone.org. I’m skeptical of the organization, and while I admit I’m not really sure what it’s all about, therein lies part of my skepticism. It’s very easy to agree that Internet access should be as widely available as possible. However, the policy details are not so easily agreed upon. But as a market-oriented thinker, I’m inclined to agree with Erick Erickson that this is in fact a bad idea.

Supporters at the press conference included Stanford professor Larry Lessig, former FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, environmental activist Van Jones, a venture capitalist from the firm which first funded Twitter, Google’s chief evangelist Vint Cerf and Josh Silver from Free Press. That’s the same Josh Silver I criticized back in May for claiming the only real news was his kind of news.

Also on the panel: Republican consultant David All, whom I count as a friend and whose work on Slatecard I admire but with whom I disagree on some matters of policy and partisanship. I’m not the first to note the incongruity of this panel; if you happened to check out the comments at All’s TechRepublican starting this weekend, Mike Turk initiated a very interesting debate with All on the merits of the group continuing through today.

David has called Internet for Everyone a “bipartisan” organization, which Turk has also called into question. All’s claim seems very hard to justify, based on the names above. For one thing, the only other reference to Internet for Everyone as “bi-partisan” comes from Brian Reich at Fast Company — who is, coincidentally, a former Gore campaign aide. Meanwhile Tim Karr of Free Press didn’t bother to include the word “bipartisan” in his announcement at Huffington Post.

But I was reminded of a tweet from @DavidAll the evening the conference ended:

David All tweet about Vint Cerf as a Republican

And in a post on Saturday, All did concede that the bipartisanship of the group was tenuous:

As one of the only Republicans in the coalition (Vint Cerf of Google is a registered Republican), I believe it’s crucial for Republicans to embrace a national broadband strategy.

Curious about Vint Cerf’s Republican bona fides, I decided to punch his name into OpenSecrets.org. For the sake of column width, I’ve removed his employers (principally MCI, MCI Worldcom, Worldcom and Google). Here’s what I found:

Vint Cerf’s political donations, via OpenSecrets.org

Finally! Proof that Vint Cerf is a Republican. Well, maybe he was once a Republican. And so, David’s claim that the Internet was Republican from the beginning has a fighting chance. But Cerf is clearly not a Republican now, in fact he has been quite an active Democrat since approximately the Reagan administration.

There are certainly times when cross-ideological partnerships are a good idea, such as when Redstate’s Mike Krempasky, Adam Bonin and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos came together to fend off campaign finance restrictions on bloggers. But it concerns me that David All — one of the C&E-recognized rising stars of GOP Washington — is giving ideological cover to an organization which is not just non-conservative and not just un-conservative, but whose basic idea treats limited government and market-based solutions as beneath discussion.

P.S. I hope this doesn’t dissuade him from watching the rest of The Wire.

All the Rage #15: Seven Words You Can Say on Wikipedia

Published by William Beutler on June 29, 2008 in #pdf2008, Entertainment, Obituary, Rhetoric, Sports, Technology, Television, WikiRage, Wikipedia and William Beutler. 0 Comments

If it’s Sunday (or, admittedly, sometimes Monday) it’s Blog P.I.’s weekly post about the ten most-edited articles on Wikipedia:

  1. Wall-E model courtesy Andy Castro on Flickr.Article: WALL-E
    Why: Disney-Pixar’s latest movie hit theaters this weekend, and it’s unsurprisingly shaping up to be a hit, posting Pixar’s third-best opening ever.
    Detail: Wikipedia aims to be as impartial as possible, but what can you do when the subject is universally acclaimed? You fine-tune the language and cut back on verbatims, as one editor advises: “Well, as you say, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, so it will be difficult to get the reception section sounding anything less than a puff piece. However, and speaking as the editor who added the current version of the reception section, I entirely agree that the reviews should be paraphrased better, with fewer direct quotes.”

  2. Article: The Stolen Earth
    Why: The penultimate episode of the latest run of Doctor Who episodes on BBC One.
    Detail: Which means there’s a very good chance we’ll see the final episode appear in one of these slots next weekend. Of the numerous British articles included in this list over the past few weeks, Doctor Who has ranked the highest most consistently.

  3. Article: 2008 NBA Draft
    Why: If you’ve ever wondered where all these new basketball players come from, perhaps you should learn about the NBA draft.
    Detail: The NBA still hasn’t caught back up with football in national prominence, but basketball fans still eagerly anticipate and closely follow draft night each year. With two televised rounds of thirty picks each and numerous trades, that’s a whole lot of updates on one night — and as Wikirage shows, most edits did occur all on one night.

  4. Article: Night of Champions (2008)
    Why: It’s not the WWF, that’s the World Wildlife Federation. It’s WWE now — World Wrestling Entertainment.
    Detail: If the NBA draft is a bit less-attended than the adventures of the Tenth Doctor and his TARDIS (yes, I’ve been skimming the Doctor Who pages) at least it is a little better-attended than this WWE event. This page was reverted and protected and reverted, but not necessarily due to vandalism. More the problem seems to be enthusiastic but inexperienced editors adding information in the wrong place and even trying to use the page as a forum. This happens often on some popular subjects, and it makes me wonder about members of the WikiProject Professional wrestling. No doubt the project counts among its members some dedicated and knowledgeable editors, but it seems that they find themselves having to undo a lot of the “help” they get. I doubt the same happens at WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology.

  5. NBA Draft archive photo from Noam Galai on Flickr.Article: Guitar Hero World Tour
    Why: Previously titled Guitar Hero IV, makers of the next installment of the popular video game series have continued to make new information available over the past few weeks, but was protected from unhelpful help (see above) until early June. Now the gates are wide open.
    Detail: Allowing people to add spurious rumors such as the planned inclusion of a Soulja Boy track with no guitar instrumentation (since removed). Interesting also that video games seem to show up in this list months ahead of release — the title won’t be out until late October — while movies typically don’t appear until the week of release.

  6. Article: Deaths in 2008
    Why: Death and taxes may be inevitable, but only one ranks well in the list of most-edited Wikipedia articles.
    Detail: Passing this week: one of the most influential comedians in my life and the second half of the 20th century, George Carlin. And then some other people, including a 37-year-old American comic book artist of cancer, a 20-year-old Russian-Kazakh model who threw herself from her 9th story Manhattan appartment yesterday afternoon, and the 9-year-old University of Georgia mascot, Uga.

  7. Article: District of Columbia v. Heller
    Why: In the session’s most closely-watched decision, the Court affirmed 5-4 that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a firearm.
    Detail: Through the week I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the claim bandied about that the case was the first to rule on the Second Amendment, and here is an amusing smackdown of Slate’s lead legal correspondent, who apparently was among the banditos: “We are well aware of U.S. v. Miller, and know much more about it than the sensationalist writer Lithwick. The article does not say that D.C. v. Heller is the first case to pertain to the Second Amendment or that has incidental remarks that could be interpreted as pertaining to the question of individual-rights vs. collective-rights; it is not the first such case, nor is it the second. It is, however, the first case to definitively or directly or comprehensively address the question.”

  8. George Carlin photo via eyewash design on Flickr.Article: Battlefield: Bad Company
    Why: Not the English rock supergroup, but a new video game from Electronic Arts which “puts the player in a fictional war against Russia, where gamers will lead a squad of AWOL soldiers fighting both Russians and Mercenaries.”
    Detail: I can’t really tell where all the edits went, except that editors have removed some unnecesary sections, but I was a bit surprised to find out that this page has existed since August 2006, presumably when it was first announced.

  9. Article: 2008 WWE Draft
    Why: Did you know the WWF WWE had a draft? Or maybe that should be “draft”? If it wasn’t for Wikipedia and this feature, I wouldn’t.
    Detail: Do you think Vince McMahon is mocking David Stern?

  10. Article: Camp Rock
    Why: The Disney Channel sitcom all but ignored in last week’s edition because I was trying to pay attention at Personal Democracy Forum is back again, down to the tenth slot from the third.
    Detail: For I think the first time, Disney holds the first and last articles on this list.

    11. Holdovers this week: Camp Rock

    Falling off the list: Everything else.

    Recurring themes: Top American film releases, Doctor Who episodes, the NBA, Disney.

    Honorable mention: I would have thought Carlin would have been ranked higher. Instead, it looks as if his page was edited heavily on June 22 but not much thereafter. And while there was some coverage this past week of the young woman who was fired for editing Tim Russert’s article before his death was officially announced, less has been said about Carlin’s article though an edit war of sorts took place here. Several people tried to add the correct data, only to have other editors ask for more information, changing the article back until receiving confirmation.

    Meanwhile, you still can’t say the seven dirty words on television, but as the headline implies, you most certainly can say them on Wikipedia. In the proper context, of course.

P.S. For what it’s worth, I feel compelled to note that I have made a few disclosed edits to a handful of Disney movie articles for distributor Buena Vista. However, I have not contributed to the Disney movies listed here — haven’t been asked and haven’t needed to do so.

Images courtesy andy castro, noamgalai and eyewash design on Flickr.

Hillary Needs Me (And You)

Published by William Beutler on June 25, 2008 in #pdf2008, E-mail, Fundraising, Hillary Clinton, Online Fundraising, White House '08, White House '12 and William Beutler. 1 Comment

My last post, written from an auditorium on the fifth floor of the AOL Time Warner Center, was a little on the snarky side about the fact that two weeks after the formal suspension of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, she is still sending e-mails to her massive list.

Hillary’s third e-mail since leaving the raceLater in the day, I attended a panel discussion with my colleague Soren Dayton and Peter Daou, who still remains Senator Clinton’s Internet advisor. Afterward I spoke with Daou briefly, and I mentioned the post and asked him about their e-mail plans. He confirmed that they indeed planned to continue sending e-mails to the list.

They didn’t wait long.

At right is the image from an e-mail I received late this morning. Not surprisingly, it’s an appeal for help paying down the campaign’s debt — about $22 million, $12 million of which she loaned herself. So I expect I’ll be getting more than a few of these over the coming weeks. But I promise I’ll only write about it again if it’s really interesting.

P.S. One more shout-out to Daou for helping me write Hillary in Blogistan: On Blogads, The Netroots and Peter Daou upon the campaign’s official launch January 2007. Yes it made him look good, but as a senior-level staffer of the front-running Democratic candidate, he was certainly under no obligation to speak with a right-of-center blogger about the campaign.

Hillary is Stalking Me

Published by William Beutler on June 23, 2008 in #pdf2008, E-mail, Hillary Clinton, White House '08 and White House '12. 1 Comment

As I’m sitting here in the Rose Theater at PDF, working on a longer post about the day’s cacophony, what arrives in my inbox but this:

June 23 e-mail from Hillary for President

This is the second e-mail I’ve received from “Hillary for President” since she announced her (reluctant?) support for Barack Obama. Here’s the other one, which arrived almost exactly a week ago:

June 16 e-mail from Hillary for President

Well, I suppose she did give fair warning. But does this mean I’ll get an e-mail from her every week from now until the convention? Until the election? And will they have the same aspirational banner across the top?

Alternatively, is this the true end of the Hillary campaign — not with a bang, but with a whimper; not with a speech, but with an e-mail? I guess we’ll find out.