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Ever since his appearance before hard core geek bloggers and techies at Gnomedex in July, there has been a certain enthusiasm about John Edwards’ Presidential candidacy in the tech blogosphere. Why? I think a big reason is that he is wooing a contingency that isn’t used to being wooed by politicians.

For political bloggers this stuff is old hat. They meet with candidates, exchange emails with staffers, participate in campaign conference calls and have opulent parties thrown for them. Hell, last cycle a number of them got put on the campaign payroll.

Tech bloggers are also used to being wooed. But by tech companies. They get pitched on daily basis and sometimes even get sent free computers by Microsoft.

So what happens when a tech blogger gets wooed by a political campaign for the first time? They are flattered and feel important and get a little star struck by the important of it all. Just like political bloggers are the first 4-5 times they are wooed. They also don’t look at things nearly as critically as political bloggers. Unlike political bloggers, their opinions about the candidate haven’t been hardened by an obsession with politics. They can forgive Edwards for voting for the Iraq War or for being on the ticket with John Kerry.

In advance of his official announcement, the Edwards campaign upped the stakes in their wooing of the tech blogosphere and invited super blogger Robert Scoble to follow him around this week. From the sound of things, Scoble is getting awesome access to Edwards and his campaign staff. What Scoble is doing isn’t clear. Is he some sort of unpaid advisor? Or just covering the campaign as a blogger/journalist?

Regardless, the result is what you would expect. Scoble, who appears a bit intoxicated by the experience, has compared Edwards to JFK and is writing enthusiastically about how technology is changing politics (a subject many have been writing about for years). I think the coverage would be quite different if InstaPundit or DailyKos were on that plane.

Scoble, like most Americans, isn’t burdened by a hardened ideology or an encyclopedic knowledge of recent political history. He doesn’t have an agenda.

I think reaching out to the tech blogosphere is a very shrewd move by the Edwards campaign.

According to the average American, this one’s a no-brainer. In a poll of 1,203 American adults, Zogby International and 463 Communications reported that 83% of those surveyed believe that a typical 12-year old knows more about Internet than members of Congress.

Do I even need to remind anyone that The Internet is a Series of Tubes?? If the average member of Congress thinks like Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, it’s pretty obvious that this 83% of people are 100% correct.

It’s getting increasingly difficult for older career politicians to catch up with younger generations in terms of knowledge about the Web. I personally remember having computer classes as early as elementary school; I’m sure kids today are being exposed to the Internet at even younger ages. The result? Politicians that declare nonsensical myths about the “mystery” of computers. They just don’t get it.

CNET blogger Anne Broache also wrote about this survey:

“…when it came to deciding which political party has a better “grasp” of the Internet, survey respondents were mostly, well, undecided. About 30 percent threw their confidence behind Democrats, 20 percent chose Republicans, and more than 40 percent picked “neither” or said they weren’t sure.”

All of this information ties in with our research about political campaign sites and blogs (here, here, and here), which we found were generally of poor quality and failed to reach the general public on a personal level.

This leads me to make one obviously clear conclusion. Politicians should have 12-year olds run their websites.

Okay, maybe not. But on a more serious note, I do believe that it would be to the advantage of every campaign staff to include some younger people in their day-to-day operations. College students, for example, operate in huge social networks (both digitial and actual), and could help politicians reach out to younger and more tech-savvy demographics. I realize that many campaigns have college interns, but it would surprise me if these interns did much more than make photocopies and coffee.

At any rate, it’s apparent that politicians need to do something to improve their use and understanding of the Web. As shown in Sen. Ted Stevens’ “Series of Tubes Speech”, it is simply unacceptable to have senior members of our Congress have no understanding of a technology that so greatly affects our daily lives and operations of the US government.

In addition to the discussion of kids vs. politicians, the survey had some other interesting findings. One that caught my eye is that when asked “What would make it harder for you to work – your car not starting, or losing Internet and email access?”, 78% of those surveyed said their car, while just 10% said the Internet. I personally do not own a car, but the thought of going one day without Internet or email is actually scary.

Also of note is that just one in five Americans believes that the next Bill Gates will come from the US. Half of those surveyed think that the next Internet mogul will be from China or Japan.

The survey was conducted between 12/5/06 and 12/8/2006, consisted of 1,203 American adults, and has an error margin of +/- 2.9%. You can read about the survey here and here.

The Problogger Group Writing Project wrapped up last Friday and somehow I managed to win a Nintendo Wii for participating with my Top 8 YouTube Videos of 2006 post.  The prize was kindly donated by 451 Press. 

As a wrap up, here are some cool posts submitted by other contestants:

• Top 10 “Crzy” Tech Gifts by Nic
• The Year in Review: The Best Websites You’ve Never Visited (and some you have) by Erin
• What Google, Yahoo and Microsoft will buy in 2007 by TIm
• Best Japanese Commercials of 2006 by James
• Look Back in Anguish: My Switch to a True Blogging Platform by Mike

Pew Internet Life released a fascinating study a few days back (PDF) that looked at voter contacts during the 2006 election.  Below is a table summarizing the key findings:

Two things jump out at me here:

(1) 56% of folks surveyed received recorded calls urging them to vote, usually from celebrities and high profile politicians.  That’s a big number.  I hate robocalls and can’t hang up fast enough.  But the calls are dirt cheap to make and clearly effective enough to justify the expense.  These things are definitely a case of campaigns using a shotgun instead of a rifle.

(2) People were more likely to have a campaign representative visit their home (16%) than to receive an email from a campaign (12%).  Basically all that means is that parties still have some work to do in developing email lists of voters.  If parties sent emails to 12% of the population, that pretty much means they have the email address of 12% of the population.

[Via CNet]

The Associated Press released a list of their Top 10 YouTube videos a few weeks back. And we did a Top 10 Political Videos list back in September. So here’s a derivative post listing our Top 8 YouTube videos of 2006.

(8) Microsoft designs the Ipod packaging….

[gv data="0pXL5_RvGrs" width="425" height="350"][/gv]

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Well, it looks like Yahoo! and Google aren't the only company having trouble in China.  Ebay announced today that it is turning over its Chinese branch to a Beijing-based company in a new joint venture, capping a 3-year financial slide.

According to CNN:

EBay said it would fold its China subsidiary, eBay Eachnet, into the venture with Tom Online, a popular Chinese provider of games and other value-added online services. EBay will contribute $40 million and own 49 percent of the venture, while Tom Online contributes $20 million, owns 51 percent and has management control.

Apparently, the trouble began in January of 2005, where Ebay reported that its financial performance was falling short of high expectations.

And China is not the only country where Ebay has encountered difficulties.  The company took a similar strategy in June of this year, when it merged its Taiwanese auction site with a local partner, PC Home.   

Meg Whitman, Ebay CEO, maintained that this joint venture shouldn't be considered a failure, but rather a re-adjustment of Ebay's strategy:  "We have determined that every country in Asia is quite unique, and we have to make a decision about every country in Asia, how we want to do business." 

Whitman also noted that "I think you have to be willing to evolve your strategy on a local market basis to make sure you are doing the right thing for your buyers and sellers and the right thing for your company."  It seems strange that essentially pulling out of the world's largest Internet market would be the best decision for the company.  Apparently, operating in China required too much time and energy, occupied too many valuable resources, and took away from Ebay's business ventures elsewhere.  

David Wolf, chief executive officer of Beijing-based technology consultancy Wolf Group Asia, commented:

Few American companies come here prepared to devote the executive time and corporate focus that China demands, and those that don’t give this place the time and attention it deserves are, sadly, doomed to be sent packing.

So who's next??

TechCrunch has an interesting post on this subject from September, 2006.  Check it out here . 

2006 has seen many fantastic developments in the realm of Web 2.0.  Looking back over the year, the growth of sites like YouTube, digg, Facebook, and Wikipedia immediately come to mind.  But 2006 has also brought us many other great websites that, while they are less well-known, are no less fun or interesting.  Here is a round up of some of my favorite off-the-beaten path websites from 2006, which I love for their randomness, creativity, and all-around fun factor.

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A couple of months ago we ran a demo of our ImpactWatch™ product that analyzed media coverage around the 2006 Senate race in Connecicut.  Today we’re launching another demo that looks at coverage on major gaming websites of the launches of the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii gaming consoles.  By signing up, you’ll get access for 5 days to a fully functional version of our ImpactWatch system that covers this topic. 

Please sign up now to get access to the Playstation 3 vs. Nintendo Wii demo.  For more information, visit ImpactWatch.com.  Check back later in the week when we’ll release our first report analyzing coverage.

For the uninitiated, here’s our one sentence summary of what ImpactWatch is.

ImpactWatch™ is a web-based media management platform used by public relations and corporate communications professionals to continuously observe, track, gather and analyze high-volume media coverage of any brand, product, issue, event, or industry.