The Politics of YouTube
Today on WashingtonPost.com I caught an article about YouTube’s emergence on the political scene entitled, “In YouTube Clips, a Political Edge” by Howard Kurtz. While it is no secret that YouTube has evolved into a hotbed for political commentary by the masses, it appears that “official” content is being repurposed as well.
I had already seen a lot of the homemade political rants and spoofs, as well as the ubiquitous clips of John Stewart and the cable news networks on YouTube, but the article inspired me to hunt down some content from “official” sources. Of course, the first one I found was from Hillary Clinton. The clip, entitled “No Public Schedule,” was taken from the New York Legislative Correspondents Association Show.
This clip shows exactly why homegrown videos are generally much more viral. “No Public Schedule” is clearly scripted, the clip is fairly long, the dialogue is boring, and although it is an attempt at humor, it is not particularly funny. The best aspect of the whole piece is the cameo appearances by a few NYC celebrities, including Donald Trump. If campaigns plan on utilizing YouTube (and other similar services) in their efforts, they need to do a lot better than this.
Nintendo Wii Vs. PS3
Update: As of 11/28/06, the BBC reports that Wii has sold more than 600,000 units in the US and Canada, compared to 400,000 for PS3. Nintendo plans to ship a total of 4 million units to North America by the end of the year, while Sony has set a target of 1 million PS3s.
Even though I am a far cry from a video game expert (or even an avid video game player), I’ve been noticing a lot of articles lately about the upcoming release of Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3. Expected to come out this fall, both systems are receiving a lot of hype, but couldn’t be 
more different. Playstation 3 is designed to be a more typical “next generation console”, complete with better graphics, blue tooth controllers, cd/dvd player, and, as shown on the chart on the right, a whole slew of other options. All of these extras don’t come without a price, though. According to CNN, Playstation will sell 2 versions of this new console for $499 and $599. In contrast, Nintendo’s Wii will sell for half that, in the $199-$249 range. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata is determined to keep the prices of the console and its new games lower than competitors. This, and the remote-control style controller serve as the Wii’s two major selling points. The controller is pretty revolutionary, and seems like it will be great for playing sports-based video games.
Nintendo Wii will bring back some old-school favorites, like Zelda and Mario Brothers, while Playstation 3 promises backward compatibility. Now, I will admit, I have not actually bought a video game console since Super Nintendo came out about 100 years ago. So I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to this stuff. But, I will say this. I can beat just about anybody in a MarkioKart racing match (Super Nintendo OR Game Cube, thank you). When my old game broke, I went on EBay immediately and bought another one. And I have been known to hit a few holes-in-one on Tiger Woods Golf. If only Nintendo Wii would bring back MarioKart (aka the best video game ever), I would definitely buy it. That remote controller looks cool.
When Should Political Campaigns Blog?
I exchanged a few emails with Mark Glaser from Mediashift a while back when he put together a story on our campaign study. One of the questions he asked is how I advise candidates and campaigns who are thinking about blogging. It’s a question I’m asked pretty often and something I address in the pitches I put together. So here is my somewhat convoluted answer.
First off, I’m a big believer in political blogging. Frankly, most campaign websites are dreadfully boring and don’t give supporters a reason to visit more than once. They consist of brochure content and press releases and volunteer forms and bios and contribution pages. And that’s really it. They cover the basics and don’t really establish a real relationship between the candidate and his/her supporters. In my opinion that is the entire point of a campaign website. Blogs are a great way to forge this kind of relationship. I believe that if you truly engage supporters in your campaign, they will be more likely to give you money, perform actions on your behalf and volunteer for your campaign offline. Telling a supporter to give you money or write a letter without context doesn’t cut it – you’ve got to give them a compelling reason to do so. Blogs have a role to play here.
I also believe that most campaign blogs are horrible. They consist of recycled press releases and op eds that read like they’ve been reviewed by an army of lawyers. For a blog to really be successful, it needs some personality. It has to read like it’s been written by real, live, living, breathing human beings. This is harder to do than it sounds. It is against everything candidates and campaigns have been taught about staying on message. It is counter to the lessons they’ve been taught by direct mail and TV and radio advertising.
Ultimately, it’s better to have no blog than a really bad one. People see through this stuff.
So, after all that throat clearing, here are the questions I think campaigns should contemplate when they think about whether they should blog.
Nanotechnology: The Science of the Really Really Little
Apparently in Texas, you need a high-tech microscope in order to see patriotism at work. CNN News 
reported yesterday that electrical engineering graduate students Jang-Bae Jeon and Carlo Foresca at the University of Texas at Dallas succeeded in building a mini-American flag. This flag isn’t just any mini-flag, however, it’s a nanoflag.
The flag built at UT Dallas is so small that it would take 10 of them to span the width of one human hair, reports CNN.
This was an experiment in what scientists call nanotechnology—the study of very little things. Despite the flag’s microscopic size (7 microns, to be exact), it has not been recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records, which claims they have no method of actually seeing the flag.
To put things in perspective, check out the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s “The Scale of Things”. As you can see from this chart, the flag built at the University of Texas is smaller than the head of a pin, a dust mite, and a human hair. It measures somewhere in the range of a red blood cell.
Continue reading “Nanotechnology: The Science of the Really Really Little” »
Competing in the RSS Feed Monetization Business
Business 2.0 ran an interesting article entitled, “Redefining the RSS feed” regarding FeedBurner. The article is based largely on an interview with the company’s CEO, Dick Costolo, and it explores the company’s business model, and discusses how it integrates advertisements into publishers’ feeds and reports back on the size and scope of their audience. It also touches upon how the revenue generated by the ads is split between FeedBurner and the publisher.
One of the more salient questions that emerge within this article is whether or not FeedBurner will be able to compete with behemoths like Google as they enter into this market. Apparently, Costolo thinks that the network externalities that FeedBurner has built due to its early lead will be enough to withstand new entries by larger, better-recognized and better-funded, competitors. Personally, I do not see any significant switching costs for publishers, and the network effects, in my humble opinion, are minimal in this context.