Obama’s online fundraising experience

The report Online Tactics Success: An Examination of the Obama for America New Media Campaign, written by Sarah DiJulio, Executive Vice President, and Andrea Wood, Senior Consultant, of M+R Strategic Services (M+R) for the Wilburforce and Brainerd Foundations, is an excellent document about an excellent political campaign.

When I read a very good text, I usually encounter one major problem: this is almost impossible to make notes, because I want to copy and save every other sentence in my working file. It indicates that there are no extra and useless information in the examined material. I consider this type reports or articles the best writing models.

Although the subject of Online Tactics Success is the best strategies for the online fundraising, and political campaign, for me this is mostly about the importance of being creative, professional in all the stages of the advertising campaign, and the ability to see and use the momentum.

What I mean is that there are no best methods and approaches for all the times and places. Political leaders in developing world can not adopt the same online strategies, which Obama used for his campaign, as Internet access there may be very limited, for instance. Meanwhile, they can learn the lesson of deep understanding of the current social trends, and professional usage of this data. If in Northern America, the majority of population pays attention on the online adds and read e-mail every day, in the some regions the graphity, for instance may be much more popular way of communicating and advertising the new ideas.

I believe, weather this is corporate advertising, or political campaign, it is critical to understand which part of the society uses which type of communication, and use it for your benefit.

Coming from Russia I always reflect on how it is possible to use what I learn in States in my home country. Initially, I thought that Obama’s tactics are almost meaningless for Russian political leaders. Meanwhile, I think I should change my mind.

One of the major goals of a candidate for some post is to make people vote. I believe that the political passiveness of the public is a common problem around the world. Many people are dissatisfied with the situation in their countries, cities or communities, but when it comes to voting, they are either too lazy to vote or don’t believe that their voice will bring a change. Unfortunately, in many countries, this it true – elections can get very screed up … . Meanwhile, online campaign may make a difference even in the countries with low Internet penetration.

I think that young people around the world love to learn new things, especially if it give them access to games, chats, making new friends, and connecting to the outside world (meaning other cities and countries). Even if they don’t have access to it at home, they have enough energy and desire to travel to some other place to get what other youngsters already have. I can imagine that this part of the world population may react actively on some adds and e-mails about some leader who is going to do his best to provide easy access to Internet, and who is using modern technology him/herself. The same idea can be applied to the mobile phones.

Thus we can conclude that this is critical to measure and evaluate accurately, the best means for advertising and campaigning, and use it in a smart way, always combining several of them. Another lesson is that the messages (or video clips) themselves also have to be appropriate for the particular audience. I also believe that Obama’s campaign benefited much from using creative, journalistic, storytelling approaches. Incorporating the real life stories of various people, out of government offices or big corporations into the campaign was a winning technique for the future American president. It helped Obama to address the issues which were important for the whole American society.

Obama’s campaign experience can certainly be useful not only for political leaders, but for the non- and for-profit organizations as well.

Groundswell

While reading the first part of Growndswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, I had mixed feelings. They may disappear later on, we will see… . The feelings were mixed because on one hand I find this study quite interesting and useful, on another hand, it may sound funny, but I feel that the authors are “too digital”.
Yes, the subject of the book is groundswell, which is “people’s desire to connect, new interactive technologies, and online economics”. Meanwhile, what’s bothering me is that for me personally, Internet is still inhuman.
I am on Facebook, and on LinkedIn, and I posted my picture for my friends to chat with them once in a while, but I cannot compare it even with the phone conversation, putting aside some lengthy letter or a real-life meeting. No doubt, online social media helps us to stay connected, especially nowadays, when people work, travel around the world, immigrate etc. so much. Nevertheless, sometimes I think that if we didn’t have all these social sites, maybe we were not so lazy to go out more and get together. How much more pleasant this is than sitting in some room or office and typing multiple short messages!
Once again, I am sure that this is my subjective opinion, that may be prompted by my profession, which is journalism. I have to write much for work, and may be this is why I prefer talking to my friends, rather than writing them.
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff evaluate social media from the marketing point of view. No doubt, whether we like it or not, the major shift of marketing and advertising towards groundswell is obvious, and we should be aware of it, if we want to succeed. Moreover, I absolutely agree that the development of groundswell threatens traditional political institutions.
The most interesting part of this study for me is about the transformation of the mainstream media. I think, I am still struggling with understanding the balance between the established media and the new one.
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff give advice on marketing and advertising MTV content on such web sites, as Facebook and MySpace. There are over five hundred Facebook groups and over eight hundred MySpace groups with the keyword MTV, they say.
These strategies will definitely work very well for the entertainment/youth channels. Meanwhile, I am not sure if they will be equally effective for the news media. Although the number of active Internet users (“creators”) will definitely continue to grow worldwide, I doubt that intellectuals in any part of the world will ever get hooked by online commenting. Why is that? – Because this type of people would prefer either to discuss politics and the media products with their friends/colleagues in real life, or keep their views for producing their own content (books, articles, video etc.). My experience tells me that these people are usually not interested in publicizing their discussions of political issues, TV programs and video clips. So, this type of marketing and marketing research might not be very effective for political journalism.
Meanwhile, the news media can certainly benefit from advertising within the online social media.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is the modernized version of software. I believe that the major innovative feature of this software is it’s design – it is not created by someone and distributed among others for money, but designed and updated by many people, including the users. It never costs money, and accessible for everyone who uses Internet.

I perceive it as a revolutionary innovation not in the technology only, but in the whole culture of creating and distributing information.

The whole history of culture is about democratization or liberalization. The ancient sacred texts evolved to be more accessible to more people, classical music, basing on the folk songs, gradually developed various forms of dialog with the audience, as well as visual art. With time the world culture and arts incorporate and develop the means of co-production, and easy access.

Web 2.0 is the form of democratization of information. I believe it will significantly change our perception of information. As users and customers, we are used to the ready-made informational products and content, but nowadays we are becoming more involved in the process of creation of these products for ourselves. Wikipedia is one of the examples of such modernized product.

Tim O’Relly discusses this subject in his study What is Web 2.0. Among all other aspects and features of Web 2.0, O’Relly describes the new business model. Amazon.com, for instance, sells the same products as Barnesandnobal.com, but became way more successful than this popular in the real life book store. The secret is that, as O’Relly says, “Amazon has made a science of user engagement”. Besides the readers’ reviews Amazon uses customers activity to produce better search results. “While a Barnesandnoble.com search is likely to lead with the company’s own products, or sponsored results, Amazon always leads with “most popular”, a real-time computation based not only on sales but other factors that Amazon insiders call the “flow” around products. With an order of magnitude more user participation, it’s no surprise that Amazon’s sales also outpace competitors”, O’Relly says.

This is also interesting to see how this new informational models will influence marketing and advertising. “The greatest internet success stories don’t advertise their products,” O’Relly says. Users do this job themselves, talking to each other online. Brian Morrissey, digital editor for Adweek, talks about the same trend in his online interview on DoubleClick.

The conclusion O’Relly draws from this analysis is: “Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era.”

As a media, web is live, and this is another crucial feature of Web 2.0. O’Relly describes how RSS and permalinks make the web pages dynamic. Moreover, this is the audience who decides what’s important on the web.

Another O’Relly’s definition of Web 2.0 is “collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain”, moreover, the products and business models based on Web 2.0 are appearing to be more successful than those of the previous generation.

This way I can conclude that Web 2.0 is the model of our present and the nearest future, and a radically new trend of informational culture.

On Citizens journalism

Whatever I read or hear about citizen journalism, here in States, I constantly project it on to my home country, Russia. Although I am coming from a very developed, modernized city of Moscow, with very active, business-minded population, using all sorts of technology, I feel that the atmosphere there differs from the US North-East in many ways.
If we look at it through the lens of media development, correlation of the mainstream and citizen journalism, we will see that Russia is not such a welcoming place for the citizen journalism as the United States. Besides the issues of the relationships between the traditional and new media, media and public and all the rest, that was discussed in our DPI-659 class, and in the assigned readings, citizen journalism in Russia faces the challenge of reporting in not totally closed, but still not open society.
Couple of days ago my TV set was on the CNN international channel, the Larry King’s show. I didn’t watch it, but listened to it while doing something. Although I spent much time in States, I still was quite impressed when some King’s guest compared Barack Obama’s presidency with erection pills. “We want our president to work like erection pills – right now, when we need it,” the woman said. She, together with some other program’s guest were discussing the results of Obama’s eight month’s presidency, criticizing the president for failing to implement a single plan of his agenda.
While listening to this program I immediately imagined how some Russian public figure compares either president Medvedev or our famous prime-minister Putin (Putin, particularly) with such a drug on some popular local TV channel… I quickly realized that this was simply not possible.
One would argue that this exactly is what the citizen’s journalism can fix – make it more open, and less official and brushed – but the problem is that in Russia as in many other not developed democracies, or non-democratic, or authoritarian regimes (name it as you like), people would be severely punished for such a frivolous published or broadcast statement, either they are journalists or not.
Meanwhile, as a citizen, I don’t strive for a chance to compare the leaders of my country with some drugs, this is actually not as important for me as just to be able to criticize authorities openly, without the fear to be punished.
To be fare, many journalists and political experts do criticize Russian government. There are few independent media outlets in Russia, which regularly publish or broadcast quite sharp stories and interviews, BUT these are the media with relatively small audience/coverage, and they are not the TV channels.
Once again, one might argue saying “forget about TV, it is too traditional and mainstream anyway, let citizen journalism fill this gap in Internet and print newspapers (which are also in a bad state now, as in States)”. My answer will be the following: in Russia (and may be in the rest of the world too), the most popular and powerful media is TV, and the citizen journalism, which is still to be developed, exist on the Internet only (it probably got into some tiny print newspapers as well, but its proportion is not significant). Meanwhile, about 16% of Russian population uses Internet.
Another critical issue is the access to information. When we discuss citizen journalism in our class, we often mention town hall meetings, for instance. Once again, even in a city much smaller than Moscow, Russian authorities as a rule would prefer to meet without any media present, not speaking of some volunteers, gathering information for their stories. When media outlets want to cover some official event, they fix it for their staff reporters, calling event’s holders in advance, asking for accreditation. If some official doesn’t let volunteers in to cover his/her presentation, it may be not because he/her is not willing to disclose something, this may happen simply because Russian society is not used to such openness. This is not in our political/cultural tradition.
Reading Get off the bus: the future of pro-am journalism, by Amanda Michael, for instance, I thought it was a good idea to develop such a model of group journalism. Meanwhile, I have a number of doubts. First, I still believe that journalism is a professional skill, which normally cannot be developed in couple of training sessions. Even just to gather information you sometimes need to have certain knowledge or/and experience. Second, I guess in any country there may be an issue of authority, causing problems. If I don’t belong to some media company or organization I don’t think it would be easy to get trust of let’s say a university professor in order to make him collect and pass some more or less important information to me. If I want some volunteer to interview somebody, how can expect that this “somebody” will be happy to talk to an amateur journalist? Third, I believe we should be careful with the idea of volunteer work itself: this is one thing to get volunteers to clean the streets or collect clothes for homeless, another thing to collect information for reporting. The problem is that this information must be accurate, and we want to give such assignment to more or less educated people. I see only two potential groups of people who could do such a job – student interns and retired professionals. Who else will have time and desire to do it?
Another case will be some extraordinary event, like God forbid terrorist attack – in such cases citizen journalism is crucial worldwide.

Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg

The book Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg is about the birth and development of social media in Internet in the USA. The author believes that the free online communication, when the reader becomes a writer is the major feature and the mission of the Web. Rosenberg tells the story of Justin Hall who created his own web site with his own stories and “funky” news in 1994, gaining a wide audience. Then, Carl Steadman with Joey Anuff published tech news on their own on the web site Suck.com. This project was the first to demonstrate that the web site can work as a stream of updates, i.e. as a real time media.
In 1996 the first conflict of Internet with the American political system was revealed: the “anarchic new medium quickly sparked an allergic reaction” of Capitol Hill, dominated by republicans. Skeptics said that the Web’s openness would lead to trouble and eventually cause censorship. The same year the Communications Decency Act was passed. The politicians said they were targeting commercial pornographers, but in the reality there were not so many of them presented online. Eventually, the courts outlawed the Act.
Further, Rosenberg shows the how the early web sites developed from the personal “narcissistic self-indulgencies” into the information and news sources. The first stage of this evolution was Hall’s online activities which resulted in changing the “default of the Web” (he made the youthful self-exposure a norm in the Internet), and introducing the mailing lists by the software entrepreneur Dave Winner. (These lists became a model for business communication: from that point participants in the market could talk to each other directly.) Winner was the first software developer, being a writer in the same time. He was also the first to develop a ”vertical blog” (Frontier News & Updates, which later was renamed Scripting News), a page that provides commentary and links of a specific interest to some specific community. At the same time Winer owned a free growing blog service EditThisPage.com and Weblogs.com.
Both Hall, and Winner took actions against the Communications Decency Act, fighting for freedom of online media, which was still to be developed. Their online activities caused them a lot of trouble though: the reaction on their openness and sincerity was not always positive.
Another pioneer in the Web was John Barger who developed Filter, the collection of links, containing the most interesting tech news. Then he launched another collection of interesting information – Robot Wisdom WebLog.
In 1998 Matt Drudge, “the operator of a one-man politics-and-entertainment gossip site” posted a report about Newsweek banning the story on then president Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, boiling the upcoming political scandal.
Then James Garrett, a Los-Angeles based editor of a corporate web site compiled a first list of weblogs, which was posted online by a web developer Cameron Barrett. This play with the weblogs Garrett described as a transition from a static to a dynamic form.
In 1998 Rebecca Blood, a web designer from Seattle, was regularly e-mailing her friends some interesting online links. When she decided to post them on a new weblog, instead of e-mailing them, Garrett discovered her activities and reposted one of her links. This was a starting point of a long time relationship. Thus, Blood discovered that weblogs could be the tools for both personal and social change.
Telling the stories of the first bloggers Rosenberg is showing the impact of Internet as social media. The book also touches upon media business and human relationships in this business.

The Search

The Search by John Battelle tells the story of the birth and development of the online search technology and business in the USA. Besides the technological issues, the author touches upon social, political, and cultural implications of Google services, and tells the history of Google Inc.
Tracing the process of the search engines development, Batelle tells about PageRank, the crawler development, explaining that unlike the previous search engines, Google used the crawler which read not URLs only, but the entire web-sites (Louis Monier); the ranking system.
The author also presents an overview of competition between the major search portals – the one of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and AOL, and their market share. From this book we learn about a painful process of business model formation for Google, the edgy moments of the young company, which entered the market, dominated by giant Yahoo. This model was initially based on the paid search (paid adds).
The author also describes the achievements of other businesses, and their influence on the market (GoTo.com, for instance, — how it’s founder, Bill Gross created the business model for Google).
Batelle traces the process of Google’s transformation from purely technology business into media, which was prompted by installation of AdWords.
In parallel, the author tells about Google’s founders — Sergei Brin, Larry Page, (describing their professional stories, mostly while at Stanford’s graduate school), Bill Gross. Batelle shows how these people found each other, communicated between each other and with the public. This parallel “personalities line” adds a human dimension to the technology and business story. This makes the book easier to read, and easier to understand the history of Google.
I particularly liked how Battelle presented a context of Internet and online search usage in the beginning of the book. He showed the scale of Internet usage both in the US, and the rest of the world. For instance, Internet penetration in the USA is over 10 times the average of the rest of the world. Being a non-US student, I was very impressed learning that during the 1990s the household spending for media and information services in the US rose at an annual rate of 32%. This is pretty much the same as in my home city (which is the capital), but definitely not as in the rest of the country.
Another interesting part of the book is about the privacy issue. Batelle describes how Google “acts” within old American tradition of open society. “American society was built on the enlightened and somewhat thrilling idea of the public’s right to know. Our government is meant to operate more or less in the open”, the author says, commenting on the Google’s ability to reveal everyone’s addresses and phone numbers. Then Batelle gives astonishing examples of people’s lives’ turnouts, caused by the private information they found through Google.
Thus, this book is a valuable source of not only the technology history, but a history of American society, its culture and business.

For me this is also a book about business innovation, and about the implications of one company’s innovations on the industry. I also see this book not only as a “Google story”, but a description of the current American society, an example of Cultural anthropology.