2008 on the Web

The Center for American Progress is doing a great job tracking the 2008 presidential eCampaigns. Check out this page. One the most helpful pieces is the profiling of each major party candidate's online presence, including a link to each campaign's official profile on third party web communities such as Facebook and Myspace. This is especially important, because the open design of many of these sites allows for an explosion of profiles that are not managed by the campaign, which could easily lead to confusion or worse as the election cycle progresses.

Their page includes an index that shows the extent of each candidate's online presence, so readers can see how extensively a candidate is using third party resources. The index is sortable by category. If you sort by party, one pattern is clear: Democrats are engaging the social Web, and Republicans really aren't, beyond managing their own official Web site.

As far as I can see, this discrepancy leads to three possible conclusions. First and easiest is the possibility that Rightwingers are somehow hopelessly out of touch. Second, one can assume that there has been at least some investment from the right wing power structure in analyzing political opportunities on the Web, and some group of consultants have convinced the leadership that the Web belongs to the Left, that their base may use the Web for information gathering, but not to collaborate and organize, as is becoming common of the Left.

The third conclusion is a little more alarming. Is it possible that after considerable research and analysis, the consultocracy of the right has quietly determined that the Net will not pay a major role in determining the outcome of the 2008 election, despite the buzz that the Web will have an important impact? If this is the case, the leadership will continue to direct their capital towards the traditional brew of TV (and probably Web) ads, direct mail, phone banking and door-to-door canvassing. If this is the case, should organizers on the Left pause in their enthusiasm to rethink their own investments in the Web and social media, at least briefly?

All of this is speculative and sets aside important considerations, such as the lack of a powerhouse candidate for the GOP. I'll keep thinking about it, and if anyone is reading and has any perspective or resource that may help to answer these questions, please chime in.

theyrule.net

You must see theyrule.net! It is a site that allows you to see how the directors of the top companies and US institutions relate to each through their membership in the boards that, well, rule a lot of what happens in this country. It's an interactive social network analysis tool that's easy and fun to use.

This is a powerful tool for activists and policy researchers , analysts and advocates, not to mention stockholders and citizens. That means you! Go check it out!

a critical mass of easily influenced people

In an update on his recent research on simulated influence networks, Duncan Watts challenges a model of influence popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point which tells us that the rapid, cascading social changes (fads, crime epidemics, etc.) are largely initiated by a small number of highly influential folks with attributes that make them exceptional social connectors, persuaders, and knowledge brokers. Watts and his partner Peter Dodds ran thousands of simulations of behavioral change across networks of agents, testing a range of variables related to influence. They found that, in most cases, "global cascades" of behavioral change did not rely on the characteristics of the small number of influentials populating their models, but rather on "the availability and connectedness of easily influenced people."
In other words the propagation of influence depends more on the structure of relationships between "ordinary folks" than on the special characteristics of an expert or charismatic few.
One the one hand, this is encouraging. "If the network permits global cascades because it has the right concentration and configuration of adopters, virtually anyone can start one." Apparently, there's hope for the little guy after all, as long as there are a great enough number of other little guys nearby, paying enough attention.
On the other hand, Watts' article dismisses the kind of influence that celebrities like Oprah Winfrey wield as an "exception..a function of media, not interpersonal influence." Sure, new media, Web 2.0, etc. are initiating enormous changes in the cultural environment, but they enter an established environment structured on broadcasting principles that amplify the power of a small number of voices, and these voices are as constant a presence in many people's daily lives as those of their neighbors, family, and friends. New media is amazing, but most people still get their news from TV.
The final question is: what is a potential influencer supposed to do with Watts' insight? If your thing is selling soda or electing politicians, it so much easier to invent an inventory of attributes that define an "influential" and then reach out to folks with those attributes. But if what you really need is a "critical mass of easily influenced people" where do you get some and what do you do with them? At the close of the article, Watts briskly invokes "Web-based social networking tools" (read: Web 2.0), but the phrase "critical mass of easily influenced people" makes me think of television, not YouTube or MySpace.

when Web 2.0 doesn't (net)work

When software and services move from the desktop to the browser (network as platform), what happens when the network disconnects?

Consider: I am sitting here trying to surf, research, and interact with del.icio.us, on which I have come to rely heavily in a very short time frame. I click to tag a page. I receive:

"del.icio.us
Temporarily Down for Maintenance

We are performing scheduled maintenance. We should be back online shortly."


There is no IT or support desk to call, no fix or hack to look up on Google. I simply have to wait.

Reflection: Well, I'm glad the maintenance was on somebody's schedule, because it wasn't on mine. What happens when essential processes migrate to the network-as-platform?

del.icio.us has come back online, but I am still waiting for an answer to the bigger questions.