Grading the new new GOP.com

August 10, 2010August 10, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The RNC re-relaunched GOP.com this week. The last reboot, back in October, was a better site than they had before, but was met with scorn and derision from the tech world. So how is the new version any different?

Design: B-

The site is clean, simple, and open, and the red-white-and-blue motif isn’t terribly over the top. It’s definitely pleasing to the eye, even if it is a bit boxy. It moves much quicker than the old site, which was bogged down with technical problems from day one.

But use the site some more and there are a few things that are just out of place. For instance, GOP.com incorporates video into several blogs and other elements, but these videos are sometimes tough to find. For instance, in the screen shot on the left, the video player is buried at the bottom. That may be due to the fact that President Obama’s image is on the player, but that’s still too valuable to bury. Further, other sections of the site miss out on drawing the eye with video – opting instead to post a link to the YouTube channel rather than a recent video.

Content: C-

The good news is that a section highlights Republican women running for office this year, which is something the party should be playing up. Unfortunately, some of the cringe-inducing aspects of the old site remain – such as a Republican Hall of Fame featuring Jackie Robinson (who wasn’t a Republican) and Frederick Douglass in a bend-over-backward attempt to reclaim the black vote.

The Issues section has a nifty carousel of the big issues of the time, plus a brief blurb on each. This is a missed opportunity; in 2008 Barack Obama used the issues section of his campaign website to dive deep into various policy proposals. Obviously, a party is different from a candidate in that there are many different opinions and angles on any given issue. The solution might be to have candidates and party VIPs weigh in with policy briefs. The RNC could set overarching policy positions, but the site could act as a repository of opinions from Republican politicians. It’s the same principle both parties use in tapping a specific elected leader – rather than the party chairman – to deliver rebuttals to the State of the Union address or the party’s weekly address.

I also found it hard to find out who the Republican candidate is in my Congressional district and what I could do to help. I ended up going through the state party’s website to do so. Also missing on the main Action center was any obvious link to voter registration information, which is pretty basic.

The chairman still has a blog – mercifully not called “What up?” anymore – and the RNC seems intent to create most of the official content in-house. This is a waste of effort down on South Capitol street – it seems like an aggregation of Tweets, blogs, and conservative media outlets would be a better way to go, and underscore that the party’s ideals permeate outside the beltway.

Now, the good news: the Blogs section, while having maybe one or two blogs more than they need, has a developers blog to discuss technological aspects of the party infrastructure. That could be fun to watch.

Utility: A

This isn’t the most obvious part of the site – I had to click around a bit to stumble on it – but the our.GOP.com community aspect has some promise. Aside from the basics of allowing users to set up profiles and blogs, there’s this:

And this:

These two features allow Republican activists to define for themselves what it means to be a Republican activists. That invites involvement, which makes it easier later on to ask those activists to participate in more defined campaign activities when the time comes. It could also make activists better, not just by promoting great ideas but also by tapping into the wisdom of crowds to help fine-tune messages and materials.

The site also integrates user IDs from other online sources, so you can easily sign up with a Facebook, Aol, Google, etc. account. Besides streamlining the process, that will help the GOP identify where and who the activists are, and target future communications accordingly. It also translates actions taken on GOP.com to social networks, and increases the likelihood of virality.

Overall: A-

I logged on to the new RNC.com wanting to hate it, but even with plenty of room for improvement, is has the elements of a very good tool for activists.

I spent 16 years of school trying to convince teachers and professors that grading on potential rather than actual product. They didn’t buy it, but I did, and that gets GOP.com over the hump and into the A-range. What it lacks in content can be made up for by the social elements of our.GOP. For the rank and file voter, the lack of local information and voter registration details makes this site less helpful; hard core activists, however, should find it useful.

Behold, your new internet!

August 9, 2010August 9, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Google and Verizon have an idea of what the open internet of the future might look like, and today announced a policy proposal that the FCC – and eventually Congress – may take into consideration as they wade through these issues.

Leaving aside the meat of their proposal for a second, the deal is a good financial move. Internet carriers and internet services figure to have different opinions, and those entities are already spending a lot of money in Washington. By agreeing on something now, these companies could save millions in lobbying and grassroots campaigns later.

But beyond the strategy is the actual proposal, and there are two items which stand out. First, the proposal only applies to wireline internet carriers – the people who plug the internet into your house, also typically known as your cable company. Verizon’s FiOS service is also under that plan, but unlike those carriers, Verizon also has mobile access points to the internet through Android smartphones.

The second is that, while the proposal does call for “transparency” among internet service providers, it makes no such call for transparency or “search neutrality” from the other companies that serve as gatekeepers – notably, Google and Facebook, the companies which provide the lenses through which you see the internet.

The result is a plan which does choose some losers, but which allow its proponents to maintain their business practices. So the deal is a good move in more ways than simply keeping lobbying costs down, if you’re Google or Verizon.

5 reasons Facebook advertising is up 1000%

August 6, 2010August 6, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Businesses are advertising on Facebook more – ten times more, to be exact. This is more than simply another channel for businesses and brands to reach internet users and peddle wares – although the fact that Facebook is the web’s top-ranked site doesn’t hurt. (Political races have already felt a limited impact of Facebook ads – recall that in 2008, a $51 ad buy helped a Dartmouth college student win a county treasurer race, and 2010 Congressional candidates are building their follower lists now.)

So leaving aside the obvious reason of the network’s large – and growing – audience, what has been driving the rapid growth of Facebook’s ad platform?

1. Budget justification through analytics, flexibility, and (most important) measurable results

The internet has been to advertising what the Moneyball approach has been to baseball – it allowed stat-crunchers and analysts to break down real-world activity into numbers, and optimize their activities according to what yielded the best results. (This had, of course, been going on as long as advertising had been around, but the internet allowed for more variables and more precise measurements.)

Like any successful online ad platform, Facebook allows advertisers to examine what trends work and what don’t, and change things like creative and targeting accordingly. This is what has made Google the world’s biggest advertising company.

It’s especially important for Facebook because, as ubiquitous as the site is, many businesses are concerned about dipping a toe in Lake Facebook. Put another way, the question for the budget-masters to ask themselves is: What if we built a Facebook page, and no one likes us? Having a dead Facebook page is worse than having no Facebook page at all.

Facebook ads can give advertisers and brand managers ammunition to go to these budget managers and identify key, reachable metrics to justify not only the ad flight, but an entire Facebook strategy.

2. Ease of use for advertisers

Another page from the Google playbook for online advertising is the ease with which anyone can build a Facebook ad. It requires creativity, strategy, and writing skill, but you don’t have to be a technological genius.

This is important for two reasons. First, if you’re in the business of selling ads (either directly or as part of an overall brand or issue management strategy), the advertising model is easy to understand and sell to a potential client.

Second, it expands the universe of potential advertisers. Local businesses could target users in their neighborhood with limited buys that are put together the same way as the ads of a national brand like Old Spice. Like Google, Facebook makes very powerful advertising tools accessible to small businesses and individuals as well as large companies.

3. Peer pressure

The first two drivers of Facebook’s ad success involve its adoption of features that Google and other networks perfected; the next two involve advantages Facebook enjoys over Google search advertising. The first and most obvious is the “like” feature on ads, which allows users to see whom among their friends has clicked on it. This is a small feature, but it taps into what has always been the driving force of activity on Facebook: the idea that people get most of their information from their friends. That’s a big reason why Facebook drives more web traffic to news and other sites than Google. By leveraging peer pressure where it can, Facebook gives its ads that much more impact.

The platform also allows advertisers to target friends of existing members of fan pages or group members. For instance, if my friend likes Organizing for America, then OFA can direct an ad at me, figuring that I might be a potential supporter as well.

4. Attractive ads

Back in the early days of online advertising, display ads checkered websites the way print ads checker newspapers and magazines. Google’s search ads were less attractive but more effective, since they were based on a user’s searches and interests. There were no pictures, because that would have only cluttered the space.

Facebook’s text ads with a small thumbnail both draw the eye and allow for some illustration of the brief message. Facebook ads require the same pithy writing as Google ads, but the small picture makes a big difference.

5. Cost

Facebook’s ad prices haven’t grown with its user base, so it has remained a cheap cost-per-click option for advertisers. That, combined with an extremely flexible pricing structure, results in a platform that lends itself to very limited and easy ad flights. This allows for a $10 or $20 test campaign – low enough that curious individuals can run one on their own, or front the costs on a project for a client and work on a contingency basis. That low barrier of entry that promotes experimentation helps win over new advertisers – and, once they figure the platform out, gives them a reason to stay.

Al Franken’s comical take on net neutrality

August 5, 2010August 5, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you thought Al Franken would give up the laughs just because he sued his way into the Senate, think again. The SNL alum has some of his best writing since the Stuart Smalley movie up on CNN.com, which gave him a platform to discuss internet regulation:

“Net neutrality” sounds arcane, but it’s fundamental to free speech. The internet today is an open marketplace. If you have a product, you can sell it. If you have an opinion, you can blog about it. If you have an idea, you can share it with the world.

And no matter who you are — a corporation selling a new widget, a senator making a political argument or just a Minnesotan sharing a funny cat video — you have equal access to that marketplace.

An e-mail from your mom comes in just as fast as a bill notification from your bank. You’re reading this op-ed online; it’ll load just as fast as a blog post criticizing it. That’s what we mean by net neutrality.

So here’s the internet we have: a free and open landscape where the merit of ideas matters more than how much money you have. So we want to oppose net neutrality legislation and regulations that would change that landscape, right?

Apparently, not in Al Franken’s world. Franken likens the evolution of telecommunications companies to his work on network television, and the media consolidation that went on in that medium.

Back in the 1990s, Congress rescinded rules that prevented television networks from owning their own programming. Network executives swore in congressional hearings that they wouldn’t give their own programming preferred access to the airwaves. They vowed access to the airwaves would be determined only by the quality of the shows.

I was working at NBC back then, and I didn’t buy that line one bit. Sure enough, within a couple of years, NBC was the largest supplier of its own prime-time programming.

There are two rebuttals to this. First, networks buy programming from other providers all the time. In fact, one of the biggest hits NBC had this decade, Scrubs, was produced by Disney ABC. The second point is… well, how is that all-Universal-produced prime time lineup working out for NBC right now?

Today, if you’re an independent producer, it’s nearly impossible to get a show on the air unless the network owns at least a piece of it.

True, but has getting a show “on the air” ever been less relevant for success? An enterprising content producer wouldn’t get the same audience online that he or she might get on a broadcast or cable network, but they aren’t being shut out of the media landscape. If that’s the yardstick for success, wouldn’t we have to say the internet as it is works just fine?

Franken starts to make an analogy between internet services providers and cable companies – which is, incidentally, the argument on net neutrality’s side that makes the most sense. But that assumes the market stays static – that is, that everyone continues to have a wire coming into their house, hooked up to their desktop computer, delivering the internet for the whole family to gather around.

But that isn’t where internet consumption is going.

At the risk of using myself as an example let me use myself as an example: in the morning, I usually check work and personal email on my Blackberry before rolling out of bed. I check my home computer to see if the Yankees won the night before. At work, I check sites like Politico routinely, and if an issue I’m working on is about to come up for a Congressional vote I might dial up CSPAN and watch online. After work, I might go over to Starbucks with the laptop to work on a post or answer emails, using their WiFi. Count ’em up – that’s four internet providers in a single day. If I was traveling, there might be more connections – airports, hotels, even planes. I dare you to try to keep content away from me.

The internet is not a utility like cable, it’s a communications infrastructure. The providers can’t afford to simply keep content from you, because you can figure it out and change easier than you can if, for example, Comcast refuses to put the NFL Network on a basic cable tier.

Regulating the internet like telephones, or cable, or even broadcast radio and television doesn’t work because those are different technologies and consumed differently. But don’t blame Franken’s lack of insight on the fact that he made his bones in old-school broadcast network television. After all, he’s been trying to appeal to net neutrality cheerleader Google to wire Duluth for broadband. Maybe he’s just trying to scratch their back in hopes they will return the favor later on.

Happy Barackday!

August 4, 2010August 4, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

It’s the President’s birthday, and the RNC is celebrating with a microsite dedicated to funny ecards. Most of the humor is pretty pedestrian – jokes about golf courses, John Kerry being a Francophile, etc. – but this one is the best:

I just hope people still get the reference.

The “digital age” made me do it

August 3, 2010August 3, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The New York Times ran an interesting story this weekend under the headline, “Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age.” The gist is that that the prevalence of content on the internet has actually devalued the concept of original work – and given a generation of schoolgoers the impression that ideas can be plucked out of the air and included in their term papers:

“Now we have a whole generation of students who’ve grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn’t seem to have an author,” said Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. “It’s possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take.”

The article cites students who copy whole passages from Wikipedia or unabashedly swipe from articles without attribution or citation.

Blaming the internet for changing behavior is one thing, but it doesn’t change human nature.

The concept of cheating a plagiarizing has been around since one cavekid copied another cavekid’s cave wall drawings to get a better cave-grade. (You can bet your saber-tooth tiger pelt that Thag would have based his drawing on cave-Wikipedia if such a thing had existed.) To see an even clearer example, look at music piracy: recording mixes on cassettes and sharing songs with friends was a common practice, file sharing services just made it easier and digital.

Take the computers and internet connections away from every dorm room and class room, and some students will still cheat. So, you can look at the advent of the so-called digital age in two ways. Sure, it’s easier than ever for some students to take the easy way out and try to get by without putting in the work.

On the other hand, has it ever been easier to catch them doing it?

Musical chairs in the briefing room

August 2, 2010August 2, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

After Helen Thomas’s retirement/historically ignorant meltdown, the White House Correspondent’s Association has figured it out. The Associated Press will inherit Thomas’s chair in the White House briefing – front and center – and Fox News will move into the front row.

You won’t see the changes, since the camera is usually trained on the podium and whoever is speaking from there. And of course, since the communication in the White House briefing room is pretty staged and rehearsed, there’s rarely ever any actual news made there. The reporters digging up stories around town will continue to do the heavy lifting.

But hey… how ’bout that new seating chart, huh?

The right way to lose

July 29, 2010July 29, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

It isn’t going out on a limb to say that Len Britton likely won’t beat Patrick Leahy to become the next U.S. Senator from Vermont. But he has used a couple of campaign videos to point out the problem of government overspending, and who foots the bill:

In another video, the creepy government guy hands Billy and his family a check for their share of the national debt. When Billy points out that it’s a lot of money, creepy government guy taunts, “Better get a paper route, Billy!”

The videos have received national attention, because they deliver a message in a creative, funny way. They’re also excellent examples of the right way to run an extremely uphill race.

I’m not very familiar with Britton’s campaign, so he could be an insane, foil hat-wearing Lyndon Larouche backer who thinks that the destruction of the Death Star was God’s revenge for the Empire’s tolerance of same-sex Jawa marriage. But based on this limited sample, Britton uses his underdog status to make his point in a way that would scare off many campaigns in the thick of a close race. If Britton were to drop this strategy to rant about the President’s birth certificate, Sarah Palin’s baby, or some other conspiracy theory for the deranged the damage to his personal credibility will be dwarfed by the damage he does to the Republican brand.

Britton may wind up underfunded, and his videos may be limited to their viral appeal, and it may not be enough to keep Leahy from wiping the floor with him come November. But this isn’t the last election in Vermont, so this video and the messages it carries can still set the table for victory – even if it isn’t until Billy’s old enough to vote.

Massachusetts declines voting rights, thanks very much

July 28, 2010July 28, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

My first vote for President meant nothing – I cast my ballot for George W. Bush on a November evening in Amherst, Massachusetts. Despite all the late returns in New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and – most infamously – Florida, I knew my vote didn’t really count in a state where the Democratic machine was so strong.

In 2012, that ballot might count even less, thanks to a new law. Massachusetts will throw its Presidential electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the popular vote, assuming enough states agree to do the same. It’s a convoluted law which likely won’t change much in the short term. The long term goal of movements to circumvent the electoral college is to put every state in play – which will be a boon for campaign donors looking to wield influence as campaign spending skyrockets.

But more significant is that the state which led the charge against taxation without representation is now a pushover. Blue suits on Beacon Hill have done what redcoats on Bunker Hill couldn’t: subject the governing decisions of Massachusetts citizens at the whim of others.

If the current Massachusetts legislature had been fighting the Revolutionary War, we might all be speaking… well, never mind, you get the point.