Tag: campaign 2012

Will politics turn Gowalla vs. Foursquare into Facebook vs. MySpace?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

In the world of location-based social networks, Foursquare has been the early leader, closing in on four million users.  Gowalla and SCVNGR have been battling for a distant second place.

Gowalla’s move to cut into the lead came back in August, when it released a set of tools for campaigns – tools that many campaigns have been taking advantage of.    Last week Politico’s Morning Tech followed up on the campaign toolkits:

Since the tools launched, Gowalla tells us, hundreds of political events, such as a rallies and town halls, have been created on the location-based service and thousands of people have checked into these events. And Gowalla users like to share which events they’re at on other social networks, too. About half of people who check into political events on Gowalla push out their status, comments and photos to Facebook, Twitter or both social networks.

And it sounds like interest in the politics-geared tools is growing. Gowalla says it has already started talking with both Democrats and Republicans about using its service for the 2012 elections. In Gowalla’s home state of Texas, the tools have gained traction with several candidates competing in local races.

Gowalla smart to take the long view, since location-based tools probably won’t be as prevalent until the Republican presidential primary campaigns.  But since those campaigns will start on November 3, Gowalla is equally smart to start catering to campaigns now.  At the same time, Foursquare has been somewhat deaf to calls for better political engagement, such as Jordan Raynor’s “I Voted” badge concept.

Foursquare still has a dominant market share of close to 70-80% (by the rough numbers).  But in the early days of online social networking, MySpace was similarly dominant.  The key is that the location-based market in 2010 is similar to the social network market in 2004 – it isn’t mature yet.  By most counts, the top three location-based networks boast five or six million users – or 1% of Facebook’s membership.  There are simply an awful lot of people who haven’t plunged into the location-based markets yet.

So what are the current also-rans to do to expand the location-based market – and make sure the new recruits choose something other than Foursquare?  By targeting campaigns, Gowalla is actually recruiting political activists – passionate users who will join their network (or possibly even switch from Gowalla) in the pursuit of a bigger goal.  By starting in 2010 and targeting 2012, Gowalla isn’t just executing a political strategy, but a business strategy as well.

 

 

Location, location, location

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The 2012 Presidential race is still a couple years away, but the early contenders are already beefing up their online efforts.  That makes it a good time to start asking what the 2012 online campaigns will look like.  The National Wildlife Federation is doing some cool things with location-based technology, and the contenders to the Oval Office would be wise to take notice.

Between social networks based on where you’re at (Foursquare, Gowalla) and the GPS-enabled smartphones that make these applications portable, location data will be important eventually to the campaign that invests the intellectual resources in it.

E-commerce dawned in the late 1990s, and in 2000 John McCain became the first candidate to raise significant amounts of money online.  In 2004, the internet offered a way to link people with common interests; the Howard Dean campaign (and later the Bush Campaign) responded with programs that helped activists find each other and organize local events.  In 2008, MySpace and Facebook allowed people to easily share content with friends; the Obama campaign’s online efforts were based around that same concept of virality. Successful campaigns change to reflect internet trends.

A campaign might use any number of location-based tactics.  Activists could be alerted to events in their area.  A campaign could offer contests for volunteers using Foursquare to check in at  headquarters or to recruit friends to attend rallies and other activities (not the least of which is voting).  Advocates could request campaign materials (like lawn signs) or instantly share stories through smart phone applications.

There’s no guarantee that the first campaign to take advantage of this technology will win, of course – McCain, Dean, and more recently Ron Paul  all proved that success online doesn’t always translate to the ballot box.  But for those looking for emerging technologies to gain an advantage, this is one place to be.

(Get it?  Place to be?  Location?  Aw, shut up.)

A glimpse of the future

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Politico today details the early spending of possible 2012 Republican candidates in building up their online infrastructure.  The groundwork the contenders are laying now gives a good glimpse of how online race for the nomination might play out in two years.

The online campaigns of Obama in 2008, Howard Dean in 2004, John McCain in 2000, and even George W. Bush in 2004 were about creating channels that would most effectively target voters’ enthusiasm through various activities like fundraising, creating campaign events, and recruiting others to support the candidate.

In the context of 2012, that means Newt Gingrich, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney are leading the pack: all three have made heavy investments in online consultants, and have a strategy for building lists and maintaining targeted contact with each person on that list.  Online operations, just like offline operations, depend on recruiting and communication with individuals on as individual basis as possible with the hope that each will later participate in a collective action (i.e., voting).

There are plenty of graphic designers who can make a pretty website and lots of videographers who can make funny or entertaining web videos.  Winning online campaigns are all about the data.  A spokesperson for Gingrich’s 527 sums it up well:

“One of the things we’re really big on here at American Solutions is sending the right message to the right people,” said Tim Cameron, the group’s director of digital operations. “We put a lot of money into our back-end infrastructure.”

Gingrich is deploying online ads across the internet.  Pawlenty is turning his PAC into a portal for supporters to give to other candidates – giving Freedom First good information about what issues matter to which donors and forming a good base of information for Pawlenty’s 2012 run.

Sarah Palin continues to attract excitement, but her online efforts, like her messaging, appears to lack focus; despite large numbers of social network followers she is not investing heavily in data management.  Ditto for Mike Huckabee, whose outreach strategy consists of, according to Politico: “deputizing a volunteer in every state to run a state-specific account for it on Facebook, Twitter and Ning, a smaller social-networking site popular with grass-roots political activists.”

(Note: Ning is no longer a free service.)

This isn’t just about online presences, either; understanding the potential of online outreach is part of understanding what it takes to build a winning campaign.  If these trends continue, look for Palin and Huckabee to have online campaigns that look shiny, draw good support numbers, but fail to launch them out of second tier status and into the midst of legitimate White House contenders.