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YouChoose… To Watch Hillary?

Published by William Beutler on May 29, 2007 in Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Web video, Website Design, White House '08 and YouTube. 3 Comments

This past weekend, Jeff Jarvis pointed out that Hillary Clinton’s entry for the YouTube YouChoose Spotlight — help choose the campaign theme song! — has been, by no small margin, the most successful entrant. Here’s a chart generated by techPresident/TubeMogul:

techPresident, TubeMogul and PrezVid bring you this chart

[Remember: These are cumulative figures; people are not still watching past Spotlights in great numbers.]

My guess in April was that Romney was lucky to go first, but looking at the whole picture (on techPresident you can drag the scroll bar) it seems that yes, Romney did very well, but Edwards did slightly better (saying something about both their online support). Meanwhile, McCain and Kucinich got some lift but not much (saying something about both their lack thereof).

How many videos is that specifically, and how many views for each? Here’s a handy guide, presented in order of candidate particpation (numbers were accurate as of Tuesday morning):

Romney 441,504 35,594 2,615 11,754 Edwards 371,970 6,412 McCain 301,113 10,871 1,137 1,179 Kucinich 294,352 1,541 511 831 Hunter 292,253 Hillary 546,691 128,632 Huckabee 92,505

It’s no surprise that the candidate’s follow-up videos were much less-viewed than the originial, but Hillary’s sequel did much better than any of her rivals. And yet her first YouChoose video received just 18 responses, far behind the 71 responses to Romney.

Meanwhile, her actual YouTube account is entirely locked down. Where most other candidates list friends, subscribers and some even their own subscriptions, Hillary’s YouTube account has none of these: the communication is strictly one-way.

Yet her subscribers number about 3,470, second only to Obama’s approximate 5,940 (and he hasn’t participated in the YouChoose Spotlight yet). This is interesting — because it challenges the arguments made by Dana Boyd at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum that the “digital handshake” — candidate interactivity and reciprocity — is necessary for an effective online campaign.

These big numbers probably represent curiosity more than anything; and assuming that YouTube’s viewership is less politically charged than the political blogosphere, it helps to have an early presence with casual voters. She needs to keep them. After all, the other big online news for Hillary in this month’s Daily Kos straw poll was that her netroots support doubled: from 3% to 6%.

Note to Paulites: Your man trails Giuliani by ~1400 to ~1100 subscribers. Better get on that!

Update: Blog P.I. gets results! As of Thursday night, Ron has 1334 while Rudy is mired at 1452.

Faster, Firefox! Click! Click!

Published by William Beutler on March 29, 2007 in NRCC, Netroots, Online Campaigns and Website Design. 0 Comments

I don’t want to sound like a broken record about Republican websites that miss the mark — this time the NRCC’s TheRealDemocratStory.com — and luckily, Mike Turk has already made most of my points already, especially the lack of a blog (though he does offer some fair praise). So let me just add one thing, using as example the main content from the page of Jerry McNerney, the lefty netroots-supported representative from California:

NRCC The Real Democrat Story (confusing)

Not that the supplemental bill was primarily about Homeland Security, but if you read the whole thing, you’ll get where they’re going with this. The left-hand column represents a campaign promise and the right-hand column represents the alleged breach. But you don’t know this until you’ve actually read it (and even then it may not be crystal clear). Now try this:

NRCC The Real Democrat Story (clearer)

I don’t know about you, but if I understand what each column means before I read it, the chances are a lot better I’ll start reading in the first place — and then continue to see how the compare-and-contrast plays out. You don’t need to dumb down your materials, but you do need to organize them with the expectation that your readers lack patience. That’s just the nature of the medium.

P.S. What does it mean when, after the first day the site is public, the most popular site linking to it is an upper-middle tier liberal blog, the second-most popular site linking is a Beltway news site? Just asking.

Hey, This Rudy Giuliani Site Isn’t Half Bad

Published by William Beutler on March 27, 2007 in Facebook, Online Campaigns, Online Fundraising, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Web video, Website Design and White House '08. 3 Comments

The new website for Rudy Giuliani went live last week, and what was an attractive if perfunctory placeholder has now become an attractive and functional website. This shouldn’t be too surprising — when Bush-Cheney ‘04 blogmeister Patrick Ruffini announced in January that he was joining the Giuliani ‘08 team, that was a good sign the campaign would have a pretty decent website. And it is more than that — but it’s also not without flaws. So let’s take a look:

Join Rudy 2008 The Buzz

Is The Buzz is just a round-up of favorable coverage? Sure, but unlike the news feed from every other top-tier candidate, here the MSM and blogs coexist as equals. Romney’s page does link to favorable blog posts, but segregates them from the proper journalists; the others don’t link to bloggers at all. The Buzz also includes a quasi-Digg counter keeping track of how many times a story has been clicked. I assume this is imported from Ruffini’s 2008 Wire. Neither feature prevents a single user from clicking on a story multiple times to artificially inflate its relative significance. That’s a flaw on Ruffini’s own site, but not so much here.

Join Rudy 2008 widget

A fundraising widget? Now we’re talking. Other candidates will let you sign up to become a fundraiser, but only the Giuliani campaign makes it as easy as cut-and-paste. In contrast, the Romney campaign makes you join TEAM MITT before they’ll let you at their fundraising tool, the cumbersomely-titled QuickComMITT. Hillary wants you to sign up before you can send your friends e-mail pitches, and while I haven’t completed the Obama sign-up page, I get the impression it’s an updating thermometer akin to the old Howard Dean “fundraising bat.” All of these campaigns want to keep tabs on their individual fundraisers, but the Giuliani team can do that through this Flash-based widget, too. But most importantly, if you can put a YouTube video on your page, you can raise money for Rudy Giuliani.

Join Rudy 2008 social bookmarking

Ruffini is no great fan of the social bookmarking buttons that litter the bottom of many a blog post, but if the Giuliani campaign is using these ones, he must have decided these are the ones that work. That, or he was overruled. Regardless, Giuliani’s is the only campaign to make these tools standard across the website.

Join Rudy 2008 talk radio
Considering how important talk radio is to the Republican base — and to the Giuliani campaign — this is a good idea. And nobody else has one. Yet the execution and experience leaves something to be desired — the boxes are small, the “Select City” box is unused, and the final readout doesn’t tell you what time the radio programs are on or on what station. Perhaps a prospective caller should already know this, but if so, why bother with this feature? Bottom line: If you want people to volunteer on your behalf, it helps to connect the dots for them.

And now, onto the less-good:

Join Rudy 2008 clutter

So it’s not perfect. I keep getting this dotted outline whenever I click on links from this panel. Not a big deal, but it does disrupt the browsing experience.

Join Rudy 2008 video problems

Now, this is a bigger deal. I got this message at home last night and again at work today. Both connections qualify as “broadband,” I’m on a MacBook Pro and using the latest version of Firefox. What’s a guy gotta do to watch some video around here? Actually, once I finally got the error message to go away (I was starting to wonder if Amazon’s one-click patent was written into McCain-Feingold…) the video worked just fine. On the other hand, it took too long to load. On the other other hand, the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t controls worked like a charm.

And the best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley, but this is still kind of embarrassing:

Republican presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani’s campaign hurriedly fixed its official Web site late Monday to remove a dangerous design flaw that could have allowed hackers to expose personal information submitted by volunteers. The vulnerability affecting Giuliani’s site, http://www.JoinRudy2008.com, could have exposed confidential information stored in the campaign’s databases. The Web site failed to block commands that can instruct it to improperly display sensitive information, a popular hacking technique known as “structured query language injection.” … “Anybody who knows anything about security could have found these problems in two seconds,” said Marc Maiffret of eEye Digital Security Inc., a researcher who examined Giuliani’s Web site at AP’s request.

Aren’t you glad they didn’t make you sign up to fundraise now? I kid, I kid. So again, it’s a work in progress.

It’s also worth noting what isn’t included. Notably absent are any of the front-page social networking icons that most of the other candidates include. Before My.BarackObama.com and McCainSpace I wouldn’t have thought to mention that there is no social network, but there isn’t one. And there is no blog. A Facebook button wouldn’t kill them, but the one place they really need one is in their social bookmark toolbar — and it is. Meanwhile, a campaign probably doesn’t need to bother with their own blog unless they have a compelling reason to do so. And while I do think a Giuliani-based social network could succeed (call me crazy) it certainly is no requirement.

All in all, not bad. And I bet as the campaign goes forward, it’ll get even better.

Brownback for Prime Minister?

Published by William Beutler on March 22, 2007 in Sam Brownback and Website Design. 3 Comments

On the front page of Sam Brownback’s campaign site is a box titled “Brownback on the Blogs,” quoting favorable comments about Brownback from the blogosphere. This box amuses me for several reasons. For one, there are only two quotes. This I understand; most of the Brownback commentary I’ve seen could be most favorably described as disappointed.

The feature (if that’s what it is) doesn’t actually link out to these blogs, which is annoying at least. One reason may be that one of the quotes comes from Leon H. Wolf, who is a paid staffer of the Brownback campaign. They do note this, so it’s more sad than scandalous. Here’s the other comment:

"The Brownback Bandwagon"

Now that one is an independent endorsement and even one with a bit of a ring. So what’s the problem? It turns out that Tim Aker writes Thurrock Tory. Yes, from England. That Aker’s website is relatively obscure is no problem — most bloggers’ are. Their ubiquity and connectivity is what transmits “memes” around the web. But when your biggest online supporter comes from across the pond, well, that’s a little different. And actually, there is another problem. Two paragraphs later, Aker writes:

I still support Newt Gingrich.

Here’s a lesson: If you’re going to tout the support of bloggers, first make sure you have support of bloggers.

Update: In the comments, Psycheout from Blogs 4 Brownback points out that it’s not like Brownback doesn’t have the support of any bloggers, and Aker himself confirms that he thinks both Gingrich and Brownback would make fine prime ministers. And both wish the Brownback campaign would actually, you know, link.

McCainSpace or MyMcCain? It Hardly Matters

Published by William Beutler on February 18, 2007 in Barack Obama, Blog Consultants, Entertainment, John McCain, Netroots, Online Campaigns, Online Fundraising, Social Networking, Website Design and White House '08. 15 Comments

Two days later, I still haven’t been approved for an account at the official McCain social networking tool. I didn’t sign up under my own name, so perhaps that’s part of it — if nothing else, it matches McCain’s antagonistic legislative approach to the blogosphere. But Todd Zeigler of The Bivings Report got through, as he mentions in the comments. Here’s his page:

What McCainSpace, aka MyMcCain looks like

As he points out, all you can do there is donate, er, raise money and… actually that’s it, unless you count an e-mail form as a feature. Want to customize your page? There’s a single text box, a “Welcome Message,” and the McCain campaign reserves the right to edit or delete it. Want to find other users? Too bad. Maybe a widget or two? Sorry, it isn’t that kind of website. Zeigler at least managed to get a Pixies reference cleared as his user name, but if we’re giving McCain’s people credit for not misinterpreting it, that’s damn faint praise.

In fact, the only thing that’s social or Web 2.0 about this website is the name, and they can’t even get that much straight: it’s McCainSpace on the main page, but MyMcCain on the network itself. That should tell us something about how much thought they’ve put into it.

Writing for techPresident last week, David All counted McCainSpace as a positive:

The same web vendors who implemented mygop.com have turned that tool in to a “social networking” tool for McCain’s campaign. Barack Obama did the same thing, and I would expect every other serious candidate to jump in to the water sooner rather than later. The social network effort on a campaign website will help harness the energy swirling around your campaign, and get people coming back to your website as often as possible.

Except MyGOP failed, and the site as it exists most certainly will not harness any energy that may be swirling about. Compare the dashboard/sidebar from McCain’s “network” to the one from Obama’s:

McCain social network dashboard     Obama social network dashboard

For McCain you can donate money, sign up for e-mails, create a page (technically) and e-mail your friends. With Obama you can personalize your profile, find people like you, promote events, create affinity groups, raise money and even blog. And what more can I say about that B&W color scheme? On the main page McCain alone is in color, which is probably supposed to communicate something about him standing out compared to his rivals — but does it really need to be strictly applied across the entire site?

As the Edwards flap goes to show, campaigns should be careful about branching out into the blogosphere, but pretending to have a social network and a blog when you in fact have neither is a mistake, too.

This may be evidence that the McCain campaign, for whatever reason, doesn’t actually want to engage friendly bloggers. But then, McCain doesn’t exactly have a huge base of online support — which may explain this as a defensive stance, à la HRC. (Other possibilities include staff incompetence and vendor incompetence.)

It also underscores earlier observations that Republicans don’t have an online game like the Democrats. The reason for that probably has a lot to do with the fact that in 2004 there was no Republican scrum and hence no proving ground for online Republican strategists. Mike Turk, Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn got their feet wet during Bush-Cheney ‘04 and All picked up a Senate campaign in 2006, but so far GOP strategists haven’t had the same kinds of opportunities as Democratic strategists.

This year there are campaign jobs to be had, in site-building and strategy, so the gap should start to close (though in the short run said lag may only be magnified). What is the Republican equivalent of Blue State Digital or EchoDitto? There isn’t one, and it may be 2012 before there is.

Update: And back over to Zeigler, on the McCain camp’s unresponsiveness to yours truly and to Turk, who adds a different (but not necessarily incompatible) explanation for the lag, in the comments here and at his own Kung Fu Quip.

Off Color

Published by William Beutler on February 16, 2007 in Joe Biden, John McCain, Seriously, Website Design and White House '08. 4 Comments

In his first post at techPresident, David All has a good summary of John McCain’s just-launched exploratory committee website. And there are more thoughts out there from Brad Levinson, Alison Hayward and Matt Ortega.

Me, I’m just wondering: Has the entire McCain campaign gone colorblind?

John McCain's exploratory committee website, in black and white (literally)

Actually, if John McCain wanted to be inclusive, he would have Joe Biden’s face up there at least twice.

Yes, McCain’s mug is on this site no less than eight times, one more than Biden’s at launch. The difference being: they are smaller and essentially not the same headshot over and over again.

P.S. I’m also unclear on why the “McCain 2008 Blog” is… not a blog:

McCain's 2008 Blog is actually not a blog

Though I’m working on an idea.

P.P.S. I can’t judge McCainSpace until I’m actually, you know, approved. I don’t remember this delay in Obamas space.

The King of Political Cartoons

Published by William Beutler on February 5, 2007 in Defections, Entertainment, Seriously and Website Design. 3 Comments

If there’s one thing Andrew Sullivan changes more often than his opinion about George W. Bush, it’s web hosts. This weekend, as expected, he moved The Daily Dish* from the servers at Time to the servers at The Atlantic. Just try and visit http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/ and see how far that gets you.

The dark blue and white color combination remains the same — perhaps makng it the only consistent attribute of Sullivan’s blog from 2000-2007 — although the banner logo has changed and he has appropriated for sloganeering purposes a phrase from The Atlantic’s founding document: “Of no party or clique.” And the Terry Colon cartoon looked… somehow off. Indeed, it’s a whole new cartoon. Old first, new second:

Terry Colon draws Andrew Sullivan for Time

Terry Colon draws Andrew Sullivan for The Atlantic

A copyright issue, I assume. But the plot thickens: who is that woman in the background? Sullivan attempted to explain:

Some of you have inferred that it’s Ana-Marie Cox, formerly Wonkette. An editor asked Terry about this and I got the impression he doesn’t know who Ana-Marie Cox is. Still, whoever she is, from the office I’m working in, she’d have to be clinging to a balcony on the seventh floor.

Hmm. It would be rather strange if Mr. Colon was unfamiliar with Ms. Cox, considering that he drew a logo for her defunct Time blog, Political Bite:

Terry Colon draws Ana Marie Cox for Time

Not to mention at Suck.com, where they both once worked:

Terry Colon draws Ana Marie Cox for Suck

In any case, it doesn’t look like her, and before long one of Sullivan’s readers had set the record straight.

And while we’re on the subject of defunct Time blogs and Terry Colon, he also caricatured Mike Allen for his little-used The Allen Report. Then Allen defected to The Politico, where he too had another caricature commissioned for him, albeit by another artist. Old and new:

Terry Colon draws Mike Allen for Time

Someone draws Mike Allen for The Politico

If there’s point to be made here, and I am not sure there is, it’s that Terry Colon draws funny pictures. If there are two points to be made here — an assumption even more suspect — I would add that the more you think about it, the more political opinion and comic art go well together.

* That’s the name of his blog, and always has been — but no one ever calls it that. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Daily News and E! Online, among presumable others, have similarly-named columns.

You’re So Vain…

Published by Not Paul Begala on January 31, 2007 in Campaigns, Joe Biden, Website Design and White House '08. 6 Comments

You probably think this presidential campaign is about you:

Joe Biden's face appears seven times on the first page of his official campaign website

I mean, really. Joe Biden’s face appears seven, count em, seven times at the top of the main page of his website. Is that really the first thing you want to overwhelm voters with when they sign for the first time?

I hate to break it to you Senator, but Time’s Person of the Year was a metaphor.

What Brownback Can’t Do For You

Published by William Beutler on January 22, 2007 in Campaigns, Domains, Howard Dean, New Media Strategies, Republicans, Sam Brownback, Website Design and White House '08. 1 Comment

At The Bivings Report this weekend, Todd Zeigler rendered a pretty devastating assessment of newly-minted presdiential candidate Sam Brownback’s online fundraising pitch: The e-mail came from an e-marketing firm (whose website, incidentally, should be profiled by Web Pages That Suck) and Brownback.com itself is currently hosted on the domain of a web design company. The actual Brownback website looks professional enough, but that’s the nicest thing that can be said.

Zeigler’s unflinching verdict:

When you combine all these problems together, you end up with an email/web program that seems more like a Paypal scam than official campaign correspondence.

And I concur. I’ve been rebuked before for criticizing political sites that weren’t ready for primetime, but we’re talking the launch of a U.S. senator’s presidential campaign here.

Rosslyn Metro EscalatorRelatedly: Leaving work today, as I descended the Rosslyn Metro station’s Everest-esque escalator, coming up the opposite escalator was a small army of intermediate school students in blue ski caps, toting matching “Brownback for President” signs. It reminded me more than a little of Howard Dean’s not-so-perfect Perfect Stormers in Iowa circa January 2004.

I had to wonder: Where were they going? I sure hope it was Ruby Tuesday’s, because the Rosslyn neighborhood of Virginia is strictly a business district. If it was a rally for the benefit of WJLA-TV’s cameras, it sure isn’t reflected on their website.

And I almost feel like I’m piling on unfairly by mentioning that Brownback’s announcement was buried on Page A08 of Sunday’s Post. But not quite.

As Not Paul Begala noted this weekend, the first day of your campaign is supposed to be your best. Since Brownback’s campaign already faces steep odds, he’d better be hoping this aphorism is wrong, too.

Better Homes and Blogging

Published by William Beutler on January 10, 2007 in Metapost, New Media Strategies, Publishing and Website Design. 1 Comment

NMS and Meredith company logosAs you may have read in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, this website has come under new ownership.

No, seriously.

New Media Strategies, my employer and the sponsor of this blog, has agreed to be acquired by Des Moines-based Meredith Corporation.

If you find this a bit confusing, I understand. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. To help you through this period of transition, I have prepared a simple FAQ consisting of questions I imagine you might ask:

What is this “Meredith Corporation” you’re always going on about?

The Meredith Corporation was founded in 1902 by Edwin Thomas Meredith, publisher of Successful Farming, which I presume was something like the CNBC of its day, provided you were on Central Time. Mr. Meredith was also a Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson, which just goes to show the revolving door between government and media is the same as it ever was.

1902? That was a hundred years ago! So what does it do now?

Would you believe they still publish Successful Farming? Believe it. But most of their holdings today are in newer old media than that — network affiliate stations and especially glossy women’s magazines.

And we are proud to welcome Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Midwest Living, American Patchwork and Quilting, Renovation Style, and Ladies Home Journal — among many other fine magazines — to the Blog P.I. stable of publications.

Are they publicly traded? Can I buy the stock?

Good question! Yes, and yes. The ticker is MDP on the NYSE, and by the looks of last quarter, I am definitely hoping this post puts me in the running for some backdated stock options.

Where do you work again?

I thought we covered this. I work for New Media Strategies, the industry pioneer in online intelligence, brand promotion and brand protection. Me, I find myself writing a lot of IMs.

You are so getting downsized.

Come on, that’s not even a question — let alone one I imagine would be frequently asked. But let me assure you, nobody is losing their job. NMS is staying in Rosslyn, under the same management, with minimal interference from our corporate overlords. And I for one welcome our new corporate overlords! I’d like to remind them that as a trusted blog personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

So what does this mean for Blog P.I.?

Um, what do you want it to mean?

Does this mean Blog P.I. will finally get a redesign?

Hey, I happen to like K2 for Word Press, thank you very much. But yes, Blog P.I. will at least come up with a banner at some point. Perhaps Meredith can loan me someone from Renovation Style.

Looks like you’ve sold out, huh?

No, I already did that.

Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention earlier. Did you say this blog was bought by Meredith Baxter Birney?

Yes, that’s right. In fact, as of today Extreme Mortman will be written by Michael Gross.

P.S. I nearly forgot — the AP completely botched their headline on the merger:

Meredith Acquires Interactive Companies Genex, New Media

On the other hand, if that means we’re synonymous with “new media,” how can we complain? But that wasn’t the AP’s only favorable screw-up:

New Media Chief Executive Pete Snyder will continue to lead the 700-employee company after the acquisition.

700! As we’ve been saying around here, you have to love 1000% growth without the corresponding overhead.