web 2.0

On Friday, May 29th, 2009 President Barack Obama announced the creation of a Cyber Czar that will report directly to the President.  The role of the Cyber Czar has been loosely defined as having a broad authority to manage and protect against security attacks on government and private computer networks.  Cyber security is a growing concern for our nation, but the new Cyber Czar must act in a manner that regulates the internet neutrally and responsibly protects the integrity of its users.  There are many questions that need to be answered, such as, (1) What are the unforeseen consequences of the new office?  (2) Will regulation be enforced equally? And (3) Could this lead to censorship of political speech?  Put another way; is this Obama’s Fairness Doctrine for Web 2.0?

In the first four full months that President Obama has been in office, the major bills that he has advocated for have passed, and have resulted in unforeseen consequences to the general public at large.  For starters, the stimulus bill is providing most of the money to areas that need it the least.  In addition, the bill requires that states fund the new programs after the stimulus money has run out.  Next, the Obama Administration’s bank bailout has given the banks hard working taxpayer’s money to pay bonuses to the executives that made the decisions that resulted in the mortgage crisis.  Currently there is Dealergate, where evidence has been ascertained pointing to a potential abuse of power; the Obama Administration, in collaboration with the Automotive Task Force, handpicked which dealerships to close based on political ties instead of profitability, long-term sustainability and rate of growth.  Either preferential treatment has been given to largely Democratic dealers, or detrimental treatment has been imposed on predominately GOP owned dealerships.  The circumstantial evidence of impropriety by the Obama Administration and the Automotive Task Force (not the bankruptcy court) is overwhelmingly unethical at least and borderline criminal at worst.  Research conducted by the World Net Daily has discovered that campaign donations by the doomed dealerships in the last presidential cycle contributed $405,000 to GOP candidates and only $450 to President Obama.  If President Obama’s short track record has anything to say about the new Cyber Czar it is that the appointment will have a negative result for the public and the Republican Party. 

With the implications of Dearlergate, Americans need to be very skeptical of the new Cyber Czar’s broad authority, and the threat to our civil liberties.  The Cyber Czar has initially been given unchecked power to patrol the internet.  So far the Obama Administration has not lived up to its bipartisan commitment; so what evidence do we have that the Cyber Czar will not abuse his/her authority by regulating Republican/Conservative websites stricter than sites owned by liberal Democrats?  Especially after the Department of Homeland Security turned against American citizens by releasing a recent report that identifies right-wing conservatives as potential terrorist threats.  It is a fact that the Democrats are ahead of Republicans when it comes to the internet, and with the creation of a Cyber Czar, the Republican’s attempt to catch up in the Web 2.0 era could be greatly hindered. 

The reach of the Cyber Czar could affect more than just the Republican Party.  To what extent will the Cyber Czar be able to regulate privacy and restrict free speech on the internet?   Will the Cyber Czar have unrestricted access to everyone’s viewing habits on the internet or will he/she have to obtain a judge’s warrant to monitor Americans behavior on the internet?  One would think that the Cyber Czar will be able to find a loophole to circumvent the process of obtaining a warrant to spy on a user under the guise of a security threat.  Do we really want the Federal Government to play a Big Brother role, and monitor what American citizens do on the internet?

Besides privacy, there has to be a concern relating to the protection of free speech.  Will the Cyber Czar be able to designate whatever he/she wants as a security threat?  The Cyber Czar’s guidelines for what is considered a security threat need to be transparent, so that the general public is aware of them and censorship cannot happen.  The Cyber Czar cannot use the appearance of a security threat as a false premise and a means to deliberately censor any form of communication that criticizes political officials, similar to the oppressive restrictions of political free speech in countries like China and Turkey.  However this could be yet another threat to any political opposition.  If the Cyber Czar is able to designate what is and what is not a security threat, what is stopping the Czar from censoring critics of Obama? 

Internet security has become an important necessity as technology advances and more data is stored online.  However, cyber security has to be enforced in way that is transparent, and will not affect the freedoms of its users.  In addition, the power to manage and protect government and private computer networks from security attacks cannot be abused to hinder the advances of the Right on the internet.   Cyber Security is essential, but if the Cyber Czar is managed the same way as the Obama Presidency has been in his first four months in office it will be morally and ethically wrong, let alone unconstitutional on multiple levels.  This is not a partisan issue, this is the foundation of American freedom, individual liberties, privacy and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  Who knew a Cyber Czar could be able to line-item the Bill of Rights.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0jnyuJ1Tg

I don’t really think that any of Newsom’s policies are good.

But I did think that his online video announcing his gubernatorial campaign was great.   Here’s why:

1-   It was Short

For the love of God please NEVER put a video on the Internet that is longer then five minutes.  The shorter the better. 

2-   It was made specifically for the Internet

I have seen far to many candidates and politicians use their youtube channel for reposting entire news conferences, long-winded speeches and news clips. I am not objecting to this material being put up, but online video allows for so much creativity and yet I see so many campaigns just pushing what was already on TV, and what didn’t make it onto TV.     

3-It was professionally produced

Did you notice the upbeat music that fit well with the theme?   The multiple shots?   The flowing story line?   The fact that Gavin speaking was shot specifically for this online video?  The fact that this video had quick edits and was always visually interesting?   The consistent text?  The good sound quality?   

Notice how when you give an intern a $300 camera you got at Best Buy you don’t have any of these things? 

If you want your video to be good, expect to spend a little bit of money on it.  It will still be a tiny fraction of Television CPM.

4-K.I.S.S.

This video was a very simple announcement:

San Francisco is doing great under my leadership.

I’m running for governor.

I’m liberal.

Join the Campaign. 

5-It spoke to a target audience.

Every time an online video is made there should be a specific target in mind: past donors, potential donors, gun owners, the media, young voters ect.

The target for this video was elite voters (voters that are informed and who’s political opinions are valued by their friends, family and neighbors) of the Democratic party, who will defiantly vote in the primary.

What did the video say to this very liberal group?

-I have little regard for the English language.

-Extremist government environmental policies create jobs.

-Government health care is wonderful and affordable because of me.

-Minorities like me.

-Government creates jobs that pay a “living wage”.

These are all things that the target audience wanted to hear.

6-It was used to in conjunction with the media.

The media talked about his video.  The story was about how he is cutting edge, and high tech.  As opposed to the story being about his problems: the failure of prop 8, his personal issues, ect.  He created the frame as opposed to letting the media frame him.

7-It was used in conjunction with the rest of his campaign.

The video promoted campaign stops he was going to be making up and down California.  And it asked people to “Join” his campaign (donate or volunteer).  

8-It was used in conjunction with other Internet properties.

Gavin twittered the video (where he has over 421,000 followers), put it on his facebook (where he has 50,000 supporters), his website (which gets more then 7 times the traffic of all his gubernatorial competitors combined), and he put it on the Huffington Post (where he is a regular contributor).

Online video must work hand in hand with every e-platform you have at your disposable to ensure proper distribution.

9-Awesome subliminal messaging!

“Stop looking back and start looking for solutions.”

“We can’t afford to keep returning to the same old tired ideas and expect a different result.”

“We need new ideas and bold fresh innovative solutions.”

=

Jerry Brown is older then dirt.

Bryan Barton is a political consultant based in Sacramento specializing in online video.

You can email him at bb@iStardom.com.

Or check out his videos he has made for Congressman Tom McClintock, The San Diego County GOP, and the Tea Parties at www.youtube.com/bryanbarton

Practicing Politics in the Twitter Era: If we are to speak of the age of online politics -- and I am not certain that we should -- let's say we've lived through the Blog Era (2001-04), the YouTube Era (2005-08) and now we are in the Twitter Era (2008-?). This screen shot of a blog post at Media Matters (of all places) juxtaposing tweets from Newt Gingrich and Matt Cooper -- proof alone that everyone in Washington is using Twitter -- provides a useful snapshot of the how Twitter works alongside the blogosphere (rumors of its death still exaggerated) in moving political messages online:

Zing.

So the Right had a vibrant 'sphere in the post-9/11 Warblogging Period, which drifted after the 2004 election, as frustrated soon-to-be-ex-Pajamas Media bloggers can tell you. The Left owned the YouTube era, which happened to coincide, not coincidentally, with President Bush's second term. Their political blog infrastructure was developed largely on the participation of bloggers and blog readers, not anyone using Twitter yet, most of the time because Twitter did not exist or see any significant usage until SXSW 2007. (You know who I can't find on Twitter? MoveOn.)

For at least a year now, the Right again has been leading the way on an Internet-based communication platform. So far it's to organize for Conservatism somewhat broadly as a unifying cause. Top Conservatives on Twitter is not quite a MoveOn for the Right -- a whispered-of but ultimately mythical animal not unlike the "Party-in-a-laptop" idea popular with some Neoliberals -- but it could have more value as a list than Gingrich's own Drill Here, Drill now efforts and even the (also short-time) #dontgo message it spawned last August. These new conservative projects are often built around Twitter itself. Sometimes this results in really annoying tweets, but at this point the right is doing more interesting things in this space. Twitter is smaller than Facebook, but makes up for it in volume of press hits (hopefully someone with Nexis can back this up for me) and news reports that its traffic is about to go all hockey-stick. Maybe it will go Galt as well.

Conservatives also have other, much older infrastructure whose blogging component counts a few successes but still relies on decidedly Web 1.0 websites, and so hasn't taken as big a hit in the Great Blog Crash of 2008-09. And like companies of the dot com crash (including Google itself), the concepts and websites that clawed their way out of the rubble did not and will not bring back substantial returns in the short run. Twitter, by its sheer simplicity, is kind of a Long Tail product in that we can (and often seem to actually do) use it in spare moments between the day, which means its audience could approach that of e-mail (especially since, you know, you need an e-mail account to join Twitter). Either could build that kind of reach, depending on who experiments more through the rest of the arbitrary era proper.

Using #TCOT vs. No Hashtags Whatsoever:

According to Internet marketing blog Hubspot, the right's #TCOT momentum means it vastly outnumbers the hashtags left-leaning Twitter users and bloggers... er, aren't listed as using, not here at least. Hmm. So which hashtags do the left use?

Pause for dramatic effect.

Turns out the left-verse doesn't do hashtags at all, that I could see from checking these accounts over the weekend:

• markosmoulitsas
• jedlewison
• matthewstoller
• ttagaris
• janehamsher
• Atrios
• ezraklein
• glenngreenwald
• KagroX
• openleft
• mmfa
• owillis
• mattyglesias

My question for the Left is whether the port side of the Twitterverse will adopt the same habit of hashtags that moves stories -- and if it does, whether it will even be led by the Kos-Greenwald-Marshall-Hamsher-Klein-Stoller-Yglesias Netroots movement. (Note: In the comments at Blog P.I. a fellow Twittizen points out there is a website collecting progressive hashtags: Tweetleft. And as she observes, organized hashtag use lies beyond "'the usual' accounts.")

And my question for the Right is whether they know any of the Top 5 Conservatives on Twitter, because I haven't got a clue.

Benchmark note: As of Sunday afteroon, Markos Moulitsas (2,411) has 7,288 fewer followers than John Culberson (9,699).

Adapted from a post at Blog P.I.

Aaron Marks asks if we are on the verge of a rightroots movement. The answer to that question depends on what we're organizing around: new tools or specific political objectives?

The last couple of months has seen a flourish of conservative organizing on Twitter. Now, we have DiggCons, complete with hashtag.

As someone who just crossed 3,000 followers on Twitter while writing this post, I'm just as thrilled as anyone about these developments. But I feel compelled to add a caution.

If these new movements don't evolve beyond efforts to colonize insert-Web 2.0-property-here, reacting to perceived liberal dominance of these spaces, we will not move the ball forward. That's because strategy must always precede tactics. A unifying goal to organize around is inevitably more compelling than cheerleading for specific tools. The end goal should not be to dominate, or keep ourselves from getting buried on Twitter or Digg. The goal should be to (eventually) dominate the American political system through the strategic use of all the tools at our disposal, including e-mail lists, fundraising, blogs, social networks, Twitter, or tools that don't even exist yet. In terms of how we communicate to the outside world, blog / Twitter / Digg triumphalism should be kept at a minimum, and a statement of our ultimate political objectives -- delivered in clear, non-technical language that even late adopters can understand -- must be in the foreground.

If you want a great example of goal-based online political organizing, look no further than Chris Bowers' call to his readers to pressure Democratic members of Congress to support no-name liberal legislation that would normally die in committee. This is actually a useful and serious political objective the realization of which just happens to be made easier by technology. But there is no tech-triumphalism in this -- just a hard-nosed political goal.

In many ways, the Open Left example mirrors the initial development of the conservative and liberal blogospheres. Conservative blogs in their early days featured a lot of blog-triumphalism, with "Carnival of X" serving as the precursor of a hashtag. This self-referential activity was good at building lots of interlinking between blogs -- but meanwhile, the left was beating us by organizing around concrete political objectives outside the political blogosphere. Raise Money for Candidate X. Defeat Bill Y. There is a lesson there. Anyone, whether an existing user of the tools or not, will be drawn to the goal, and will eventually latch on to the tools as a way to achieve the goal. The netroots was not self-consciously about dominating blogs. It was about routing around existing failed power structures to achieve concrete external goals, and blogs just happened to be the readiest tool in the arsenal.

People like Justin Hart are working to convert the right's energy on Twitter into dollars for candidates and organizations. And #TCOT has a whole slew of action projects, including a campaign to realize the 435 District Strategy and pressuring RNC members to get on Twitter. Given that Twitter is best used as a person-to-person medium, this is actually not a bad way to personally influence the 168 who elect the next Chairman to make sure our concerns are heard.

As someone who conspired in the creation of a hashtag around the wedding of one of The Next Right's founders last night (Congrats, Soren!), I know what great fun they can be. But if our goal is to exert real-world political power and convince the late adopters to follow, we might want to think about organizing our movement around things that are more serious, and less meta, than another hashtag.

It's the Webster's opinion that the GOP has plenty of ideas, a solid core brand, and had a terrific '08 ticket sailing into a political perfect storm.  There are twice as many self-identified conservatives as progressives.  We easily will eclipse the Left's very impressive performance in rallying their base simply by giving space to rank and file citizens on the Web and giving them gentle guidance about practical ways they can make an impact -- with a click!

I've been speaking to the leaders of many advocacy groups and there is real enthusiasm for adopting a new, more optimistic populist model.  How?  By creating social networking webspaces that are inviting to activists and concerned citizens, inviting people to come to the fore in a site context comparable to my.barackobama.com. 

The good news is that the tech has been made ultra-simple, easier than blogging! -- and is free (or, in a premium service, at very modest cost) from Ning.com.  The Susan B. Anthony List's pilot of this model, TeamSarah.org, saw its community grow from 30 members two months ago to about 60,000 today -- with 6.6+ million internal pageviews.  And continues to grow post-election.  (Full disclosure: I architected Team Sarah for them.  Props to Emily, the site's key leader.  She really gets it.  We will get it too!)

Web 1.0 was 99% about informing and educating, 1% about listening.  Web 2.0 is 99% about listening and 1% about informing and educating.  Properly done, this is a recipe for creating intense and effective populist communities and is available to anyone who wishes to give it a try.  One has already begun to go to scale, others will too.  I've laid out a few how-to tips on www.thewebstersdictionary.com, the companion site to my recently published The Websters' Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World, which was deeply informed by many astute postings by Ruffini and may be downloaded in eBook form for free.

The "net" result is that we don't have to criticize, complain, or persuade anyone -- in the party, elected officials, donors, opinion leaders -- to do anything.  Anyone so inclined can just do it herself or himself.  (And by the way, the success stories all share an implicit common factor of having a lot of women involved, which is a secret key to succcess.  The Boy's Club Model is defective for reasons that may end up as a topic of discussion in thewebstersdictionary.com's own social network found under the tab marked "Bar & Grill."  If you wish your effort to succeed, make sure that women have full presence, status and participation.  If you don't know how to do this ... and many guys do not -- ask around until you figure it out.  But if you intend to win -- do it.)

The Web has put the power in our hands.  We have the tools.  We have the model.

Use your newfound powers only for Good!

Ralph Benko

"The Webster"

;  )

During this election cycle, we've talked a lot about the collective advantage the Left, and by virtue of that, the Democrats have online -- both media-wise and in terms of basic design aesthetic (check out Patrick Ruffini's gallery of campaign website screenshots). But, yesterday, when I was checking the dates of the Democratic convention, I was half-shocked by the DNC's website for the event:

A ton of white space, uneven columns, a somewhat generic looking banner, and no central, unifying feature on the page. It's not memorably bad, of course, it just looks unfinished. Meanwhile the Republicans have produced this:

The other day, I wondered why more tech-savvy lefties were not more outspoken against Michael Capuano's objectively dumb proposals for Internet use in the House. Matt Stoller has now spoken out pretty strongly against Capuano. He has followed up with a response to some internal criticism that's popped up on Open Left.

Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) was perfectly right in sounding the alarm about this. Even though the Capuano rules are technically a loosening of existing standards, they would create some very bad precedents, including a narrow focus on existing services like YouTube and an inherent distrust of advertising-supported Web startups.

For a minute, I was a little worried that we were seeing the tech-savvy Anti-Stupid Coalition balkanize into red and blue camps. What is the Anti-Stupid Coalition? It's a group of tech-savvy activists in both parties who will set aside party labels when one of our own does something objectively stupid with technology or government transparency. Republican online operatives like myself have been unafraid to speak out when the party isn't doing all it can to harness the medium. It's good to see that not every techno-progressive is circling the wagons around Capuano, as I initially feared.

But what strikes me about Stoller's rant against bureaucratic stupidity is that it could so easily have been uttered by a conservative "leave me alone" type:

If you like this post, Digg it.

The conservative blogosphere is in a full-on feeding frenzy over an anti-Semitic, user generated blog post on My.BarackObama.com entitled "How the Jewish lobby works." The Obama campaign has, appropriately, scrubbed the post from its website.

At LGF, Charles Johnson sums up the usual guilt-by-association argument:

By the way, it is absolutely no excuse to say that “anyone can post a blog there.” Barack Obama isn’t running a Blogspot blog, he’s running for president of the United States, and his official web site is full of hatred and antisemitism.

The Obama campaign is right and Charles, Hot Air, Malkin, and the rest of the conservative blogosphere are wrong.