K Street Cafe

Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out (Wired)
Since Facebook turned down Google’s investment offer, the rivalry between the two online titans has only grown deeper.

Too Busy To Read Tweets? Try Twitter For Busy People (Mashable)
A new service makes following massive about of Twitter users easier by listing the latest tweets from all of the people you follow.

Adfero Group’s Chris Battle (editor of Security Debrief) spoke with Francis Rose of Federal News Radio regarding how government agencies are using, or trying to use, Web 2.0 technology.

Listen to the interview here.

This morning, I received an e-mail from NARAL Pro-Choice America. It began:

I was stunned when I saw the recent exchange between Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly [link added]. The one where she said, “I don’t really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.”

This is the kind of rhetoric we ask you to stand against today.

To honor the legacy of Dr. George Tiller, and as a symbol of your commitment to furthering his pro-choice values, NARAL Pro-Choice America recently launched the “Trust Women” wristband campaign. Donate today and get your “Trust Women” wristbands.

Since you’re reading this blog, this sort of missive likely is familiar: An advocacy group uses a current cause celebre to gin up donations. (Incidentally, Coulter inspired a similar campaign two years ago when she called then-presidential candidate, John Edwards, an offensive slur.) Such ad hoc initiatives tend to be especially effective (even if their ability to counteract the given evil is questionable).

Yet as critical as they are, fund-raising e-mails today seem all-too common. By the same token, the opportunity to engage your members as activists rather than donors is all-too uncommon. Indeed, the ability to see its supporters as more than ATMs was one of several tactics that distinguished the Obama e-campaign from its peers. As Tim Dickinson observed in Rolling Stone,

Before long, the campaign had transformed hundreds of thousands of online donors into street-level activists. “Obama didn’t just take their money,” says Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000. “He gave them seats at the table and allowed them to become players.”

As such, it seems that NARAL’s e-mail would have more been more powerful as an action alert. Instead of hitting people up for money in this still-dismal economy, the organization could have asked us to contact Fox News and/or our local affiliates, and request that Coulter’s contract be cancelled or that O’Reilly issue a clarification.

The resulting buzz might even have spurred some donations.

The Conclusion of a six-part series, which will be collected into an e-book and released in early July. Cross-posted on e.politics.

As the presidential race heated up, the internet grew from being the medium of a core group of political junkies to a gateway for millions of ordinary Americans to participate in the political process, donating odd amounts of their spare time to their candidate through online campaign tools. Obama’s campaign carefully designed its web site to maximize group collaboration, while at the same time giving individual volunteers tasks they could follow on their own schedules.

“Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency,” Sarah Lai Stirland, Wired.com, 11/4/2008

For all their zeal and the sophistication of the tools they had at hand, Obama’s supporters weren’t the only ones active online in 2008, nor was he the only candidate willing to trust ordinary people to carry his message. Ron Paul’s supporters made an early splash, swarming internet discussion groups and the comments sections of national news outlets. Plus, they raised tens of millions of dollars over the web, pushing the former Libertarian far ahead of his Republican rivals on that score in the last quarter of 2007. But Paul was a classic niche candidate, whose support would never spread far beyond a relatively narrow circle of activists, and his online prominence serves mainly as an example of the internet’s ability to amplify the collective voice of a small number of passionate people.

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How LIVESTRONG Uses Social Media for Good #FindingTheGood (Mashable)
Lance Armstrong’s “LIVESTRONG” campaign is an excellent example of how to best harness the power of social media.

Obama Campaign Activists Find Health Care Harder Sell (Bloomberg)
President Obama’s grassroots “army” is finding it difficult to successfully mobilize over the health care reform debate.

Please join us NEXT TUESDAY JUNE 23rd at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 401 Ninth Street, NW (Metro Center/Gallery Place), at 12:15pm, for Media Future Now’s brown bag lunch.

Please bring a bag lunch and we will provide refreshments and snacks.  Thank you in advance to Vinnie Curren, COO and EVP of Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Vinnie’s colleagues at CPB for hosting our June 23rd lunch.

OUR JUNE 23rd EVENT: “Redskins, Twitter and SocialTimes”, with Cindy Boren of The Washington Post (Redskins and NFL Editor), and Nick O’Neill of Social Times and AllFacebook. (more…)

The White House and Web 2.0: Reality Sets In (New York Times)
Frederic Lardinois highlights a few interesting points from a Center for American Progress’ report on the White House’s use of Web 2.0.

Despite YouTube Maneuver, Parental Leave Bill Passes House (Washington Post)
As more legislators join the social media revolution, YouTube videos become the next step in politicians tactics.

By Chris Battle
Cross-posted at Security Debrief

Earlier this week, the Center for American Progress hosted a forum on Gov’t 2.0, a much-needed discussion now that President Obama has issued a directive to federal agencies to embrace new media tools in an effort to become more transparent and responsive to the public.

Unfortunately, not everybody is as enlightened as the President in this regard. If you live in Virginia, I challenge you to email your U.S. Senator. Either one of them. The response you’ll get: Shut up and bug off — your views won’t matter until the election cycle. That is the gist of a response I received from Sen. Mark Warner –  a long tedious form email that wasn’t even the kind of old-fashioned form email people come to expect from their elected representatives. In the “good old days,” politicians would at least send you a form letter that was on topic, say about gun control or the environment. Nowadays, the form letter is so canned and unthoughtful as to actually be campy. Whether you send an email about the war on terror, gitmo, health care reform or global warming, you’ll get the same exact mindless response — basically the Senator apologizing that he gets so much mail from needy constituents and he really appreciates your views — no really, he does — and he will keep them in mind, of course, but he can’t respond any further.

Uh huh.

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