Arianna Huffington has a blog post up exposing the maker of the now famous “Vote Different“ Hillary Clinton attack ad as Philip de Vellis, an employee at the Democrat web consultancy Blue State Digital.  Background on the situation is available here.

I’d like to personally thank Huffington for breaking this story.  I was suffering from a serious case of parkridge47 overload. 

Here are some others on the story:

• I Made the “Vote Different” Ad - Philip de Vellis
• My Thoughts, Before This Gets Out of Hand - The Beta Stage
• What de Vellis? Obama Consulting Firm Employee Made The Act - Hotline On Call
• ParkRidge47 Mystery Solved by HuffPost - Tech President
• Creator of Anti-Hillary “1984″ Video Revealed - The WP Fix
• Anonymity Sucks - Tech President
• Surprise! Obama’s web team is ParkRidge47 - David All

Here’s the video for those who haven’t seen it.

John Edwards just started Twittering  a few weeks ago.  In that short time, he has already accumulated 1,261 followers and 1,341 friends.  Not bad.  Based on the Twitterholic leaderboard, John Edwards is probably one of the top five most popular people on all of Twitter in terms of friends/followers (although he is not yet on that list).

Undoubtedly part of his popularity is due to the curiosity of having a Presidential candidate on Twitter.  But I actually think the structure of Twitter works well for campaigns.

As Brad Levinson notes, Twitter feels a bit narcissistic self indulgent.  Do people really need to get these constant updates about my whereabouts every few minutes?  Nope.  Most normal people will play with it for a few weeks, realize no one cares about their cat and that they are writing for an audience of one, get bored and move on to other things. 

But Twitter is perfect for folks with a bit of name recognition who can build a list of followers and have a desire to live in the public eye (it is actually amazing to me that people have the time/energy to update 20+ times a day).  That's why the hype is largely being driven by prominent bloggers and Internet famous types who can pull an audience. 

The dirty little secret here is that Twitter is actually a bit of a top down system.  Regular blogging allows for trackbacks and commenting which flatten things a bit.  With Twitter these sort of connections are possible but are opt in.  While many (like Scoble) are using Twitter to make connections and have conversations, it can just as easily be used as a sort of newfangled version of direct mail. 

USA Today has an interesting post on their Community Center blog about their decision to post the latest comments on articles and blog entries first.  Most blogs (including this one) post comments in chronological order instead of reverse chronological.  Here is USA Today's explanation of the decision:

As development continued, USA TODAY considered the audiences and found the story audience faced more of an adjustment at launch. Beyond debating the order of comments, this audience was new to the first step in the comments environment — commenting itself. This adjustment strongly favored putting the latest comments first. When you wrote a comment and submitted it, that comment immediately appeared at the top of the list, directly below the submission box. The animated effect showed the interaction was easy and successful, rewarding to anyone stepping into the world of commenting. Keeping the latest posts on top also complemented the way editors handled stories. Just as editors overwrote stories with updated versions or weaved the latest details into stories' opening paragraphs, the latest comments followed along.

I understand the logic being used here but I think in almost all cases a first-to-last approach is best.  Why?  Because it makes it possible for readers to comment on what others before them have said and to have an actual conversation with each other about the story. 

When you post from last-to-first, readers can't really follow the discussion and you typically end up with random, disconnected comments (like you see on MySpace pages).  This approach will lead to 100 separate comments from readers that sort of exist in a vacuum.  The real power in commenting is in people building on each others thoughts and actually getting somewhere.  

What do you think?

Gary Bivings and I attended last week’s Politics Online Conference here in DC. Here are some (completely personally biased) highlights from one of my conference favorite panels. Over the week I’ll be posting other things I thought were interesting from some of the other panels I attended at the conference.

Presence in Second Life by politicians has limited effect within Second Life but gets great mainstream coverage. Jerome Armstrong, founder of the liberal blog MyDD and consultant for Mark Warner’s Forward Together PAC said that Warner’s virtual presence in Second Life was not well received at all by political bloggers, but very well received by non-political bloggers, and also received lots of good mainstream press coverage.
My thoughts: Politicians in Second Life has always seemed gimmicky to me. As the novelty of a politician being in Second Life wears off (and it’s wearing off quickly) so will the resulting mainstream coverage.

Campaigns are having big online-only events. Patrick Ruffini , previous eCampaign director for the RNC and currently an online strategy adviser to Mayor Giuliani, suggested that, unlike previous in campaign cycles, ’08 Campaigns are using the web to make major announcements. By having some big events offline and other big events online, the impact of the online event expands beyond the political blogosphere where a candidate. For example Hillary Clinton can have a big online event and in doing so reach out beyond the political blogosphere where she’s not particularly well received (at the moment).
My thoughts: Great observations – I’ll be watching big online announcements with this perspective from now on.

“Flooding the Zone.” Chuck DeFeo, General Manager of conservative hangout TownHall.com fame and eCampaign Manager for Bush-Cheney ‘04, suggested that politicians need to react quickly to bad press, even if it’s in the form of unfavorable YouTube videos. After the Allen Macaca incident, someone searching YouTube for “Macaca” should have found lots of pro-Allen stuff instead of just the Macaca video. DeFeo calls overtaking the negative message with a positive message “Flooding the zone”.
My thoughts: Love the term – campaigns can and should prepare for the worst to happen in new media because when it takes off it will take off virally and like a rocket. Incidentally, everyone at the conference was talking about Macaca and future Macaca moments, but I’ll have more on that in another post.

YouTube is a massive video focus group. Chuck DeFeo suggests that with YouTube campaigns have a huge focus group to help them find out “what’s going to pop and what’s not.”
My thoughts: Chuck is right and campaigns will begin to use YouTube to “test the waters” routinely.

Leverage supporters to be experimental for a campaign. While the general consensus was that politics on the web is not just about raising money and that web campaigns need freedom from the top in order to succeed, Chuck DeFeo noted that “Campaigns are not good R&D environments”. Joe Trippi , Howard Dean’s campaign guru in ’04, agreed but suggested instead that, “Campaigns need to provide tools for supporters to be experimental.”
My thoughts: Trippi is right and campaigns can be good R&D environments if it isn’t the campaign itself doing the R&D but rather the supporters – organize and leverage campaign supporters properly and give them the tools they need to make the experimentation happen. While campaigns are by nature super-cautious, I think things will end up going in this direction sooner or later, but maybe not in a big way in this cycle.

Prediction: the end of big money? Joe Trippi, credited with helping Dean raise more money than any other Democratic presidential campaign in history, thinks that online fundraising is going to take over altogether. “One of the candidates will hit a home run with fundraising in a big way and take over big money and PAC’s.” One message in one debate that appeals to a large grassroots contingency “can totally trip over and change politics.” He thinks it will happen in this cycle.
My thoughts: Either way, we’re definitely in for a great online ride in this campaign cycle.

For me, the Washington Post Express is a staple of my morning commute.  Its "light" version of the news is great for getting an overview of the day's events, while the entertaining style, opinion, and pop culture commentary helps distract me from the inevitable annoyances that come with riding the bus every day.  Oh, and did I mention the Express is free and available on every corner of DC?

Not only has the Express positioned itself as a premiere free paper in DC, but it also has quite an ambitious, although somewhat unappreciated, online program.  I think that larger papers could learn a lot from the Express' online program, so I'd like to take a few minutes to point out some of the site's best features.

5 Reasons the Express has got the Right Idea:

1. Blog Based Approach.  All of the articles on the Express are laid out in blog format. with functions for commenting, trackbacks, and tags.  This is a far cry from most newspaper websites, which often display their articles in flat or stagnant formats.

2. Integration of Print and Online Editions.  Not only can you find the Express' print content on the Web, but the Express is one of the only publications I've seen that uses online responses to build content for the print version of the paper.  The back page of the Express is dedicated to publishing reader comments about Express articles or current events issues.  I think this is a great way to encourage discussion and participation around the news. 
3. Focus on Localized, Niche Content.  TBG writers have often mentioned the importance of offering hyper-local/niche content online in order to attract audiences (See Todd's post) .  The Express does this really well, allowing online readers to filter its already localized articles by state, city, or neighborhood.  For example, readers can view the news articles that are specific to DC, Maryland, or Virginia.  Online poll results can be viewed according to metro line or metro stop.  Finally, the Metro Links section of the site allows users to find restaurants, theaters, and other establishments according to their metro stop. Users can even use Google maps on the site to read articles about specific neighborhoods in DC/MD/VA.  What I think is especially interesting about this website is that the Express doesn't even bother to publish national news online.  I guess the editors recognize the value of their local content and realize the redundancy of publishing national/international news on the paper's website when, let's face it, The Post Express is definitely not going to compete with big national news providers (think CNN, NYT), for general interest readers.
4. Design.  The Post Express is definitely not a hotbed of creative design techniques.  The site is plain, simple, and consists of a lot of white space.  Some might even say that the Express site is boring.  But you know what, it works.  It works because the pages aren't cluttered with huge lists of articles or big banner ads.  Interactive content is highlighted up front instead of buried behind subscription or registration walls, and most importantly, I don't get a headache when I look at the page for more than 30 seconds.  So while the design and layout aren't anything to write home about, they certainly are an improvement upon even some of the nation's top newspaper websites, which descriptors like "cluttered" or "chaotic" are most appropriate (See, for example, the Baltimore Sun and the San Diego Union-Tribune).
5. Digestibility. One thing that's great about the Express' content is that it is all quick and easy to read, which makes the articles perfect content for blog entries.  While you wouldn't use the Express as your primary news source, it's great for getting a taste of the day's headlines.  Similarly, the website is full of interesting local tidbits that can all be read rather quickly.  I think this is key for online newspapers.  Quick, interesting blurbs are likely to travel around the web via discussion and comments, while longer articles may tend to get lost in cyberspace.

With these things in mind, I can't help but ask the question, if the Express is doing all these things right, why is there so little activity on the paper's website?  Most articles on the site don't elicit comments from readers, which is sort of a key part of the Express' online strategy.  

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A few weeks ago, Gary asked me to obtain some "academic" literature on new PR tactics.  I was able to find some interesting articles through my university library that were both relevant and informative.

While these articles were helpful, Gary was disheartened to realize that he couldn't really do anything with them.  Wanting to share these great articles and studies with some of our clients and colleagues, it was frustrating to not be able to link to these articles directly on the Web.

Currently, academia is a super-protected industry, with scholarly journals requiring prohibitively expensive membership/subscription fees, and with articles hidden behind registration walls, firewalls, library access permission, and other types of blockades.

What's the point of having all this great information if it can't be shared?

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This is not a complete list of how the news media can use blogs, but it provides several ideas for journalists who are scratching their heads about how to launch blogs that serve a purpose other than as another distribution channel for content.

(1) Solicit ideas for coverage
Make readers/viewers/listeners feel a part of the editorial process; turn a show over to them. They can participate via a blog.
Examples: BBC's World, Have Your Say and PRI's Open Source

(2) Request feedback on how to shape an editorial product
Does your news organization want to develop a new product?  Ask the people who will use for input.
Examples: NPR's Rough Cuts for new show development and The Economist Group's Project Red Stripe for a new innovative web product

(3) Host public blogs
Expand coverage by allowing normal folk to share news in their neighborhoods as well as their opinions, photos, analysis, and news.
Examples: Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, Utah's Daily Herald, and Fox 13 in Salt Lake City

(4) Provide ongoing coverage
Allow reporters and producers to continue covering a story that may not make it to print or air all the time.
Example: The New Yorker's New Orleans Journal

(5) Foster interaction between journalists and citizens
Enable normal folk to hold journalists — especially commentators — accountable for their work.
Example: The Guardian's Comment is Free

(6) Cheaply report news about niche interests
People are interested in fishing, knitting, and wine.  Why not regularly cover these interests with a blog?
Examples: USA Today's Today in the Sky for airline junkies, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Venture Blog about venture capital and startups, and The Sydney Morning Herald's The Backpacker for international backpacking travel

(7) Request help from the public on covering a story
Need help covering a story or digging up data?  Ask the public for information and assistance.
Example: ABC's The Blotter — think about the Mark Foley Scandal

(8) Get experts to interact
Blogs are a great way for experts to interact together to discuss an issue.  A blog is a platform where the public can see the debate and the nuances of their arguments and disagreements.
Example: The Washington Post's Post Global

(9) Get non-journalists to report on their areas of expertise
Not all experts or eyewitnesses are journalists, and even non-journalists have much to offer an editorial product.
Example: The Washington Post's and Newsweek's On Faith

(10) Provide sneak peaks of upcoming stories
Tease the public on what's to come.
Examples: CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 Blog and NPR's Blog of the Nation

(11) Allow journos to share their interests and passions
Journalists are best when they are personable so that the public can relate to them.
Example: France 24's Inside the Newsroom

(12) Share internal memos and briefings with the public
Some people in the public love to see what notes are passed around in the newsroom.
Example: CNN's Political Ticker

(13) Defend editorial decisions
Not everyone is happy about how a story is covered — or not, for that matter.  Defend these decisions or reveal the internal debate about how a story was handled via a blog.
Example: BBC's The Editors

(14) Provide case studies for issues of public interest
How can a news organization provide a case study about an issue that it covers? By using a blog.
Example: Men's Health's The Bret Baier Project tracks how a Fox News correspondent sheds some pounds

(15) Share what you're reading
What are newsroom staffers reading?  Perhaps the public would like to read these items as well.
Example: The American's Marketplace of Ideas

(16) Publish content that didn't make it on air or in print
If your organization gathered and prepared content that wasn't released, why not post it to a blog if it is otherwise fine?  The investment was already made.

The excellent Pro Blogger has a post up asking reader's to list their top 5 blogging tools.  I started to write my list in the comments, but I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and make it a full blog post.

So here are my top 5 blogging tools:

(1) Wordpress

Wordpress is the best blogging platform for my money because it is easy to use, full featured and completely open source (free!).  Make sure to install Akismet to help with comment spam and WP-Cache to help deal with the Slashdot/Digg/Fark affect.  Do those two things and you are golden.

(2) Windows Live Writer

Even in the latest version of Wordpress, it is annoying/difficult to write longer posts within the online HTML editor.  Windows Live Writer is a good piece of blog editing software you install locally to write and manage your blog posts.  It allows you to post your blog entries without ever logging in to the Wordpress interface.  Full review here.

(3) Feedburner

We are currently hosting our RSS feed on Feedburner, and also use it for stats tracking and management of our email alerts.  By hosting our RSS on Feedburner, we are able to measure how many subscribers we have and also add goodies to our feed (Digg buttons, number of comments, etc.). 

(4) Clicky

Clicky is a great tool for tracking blog statistics.  A full review is here.  I've also heard that Statcounter and Mint are excellent but haven't tried them out yet. 

(5) MyBlogLog

We have just been using this for a month or so and I continue to think the blog-based social networking tool is a great way to build a community around your blog.  Full review is here.

What are your favorite tools?

I have an idea for The Economist Group, which has assigned six staffers from various divisions to develop an innovative web based product for the company that can pull content from any of its properties.  They're blogging about their progress on the Project Red Stripe blog and soliciting ideas from the outside world.  Since this group is developing an Internet based product, it better take advantage of what the web has to offer when it comes to interactive features.  My idea is a super-sized Big Mac Index section with community and interactive features that personalizes and expands the scope of the index. 

The Big Mac Index is an understandable way to present currency exchange-rate differences around the world since a Big Mac is a fast food item that is virtually the same to many of us.  Thus, it is simple to understand that Argentina's economy is relatively weak compared to the United States' economy if the Big Mac is significantly cheaper in Buenos Aires than it is in Boise. 

That seems simple enough, but why not flesh it out more? 

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Viacom Inc. reported this morning that it is suing Google and YouTube for $1 billion (via the Washington Post, BBC News, the Blogging Times).

Honestly, the only thing that surprises me about this is that it didn't happen sooner. 

Apparently, Viacom, which owns brands including MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodeon, CMT, SpikeTV, Paramount and Dreamworks, believes that "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times."

Viacom is accusing Google and YouTube of massive copyright infringement. Go figure. 

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(1) Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design

Tantek Celik of Technorati explains that Twitter is successful in part  because it requires a lot less key strokes than blogging or email. 

(2) John Edwards has 792 Twitter Friends  

I continue to think Twitter is going to be the next big thing.

(3) Politics Online Conference is this Thursday and Friday

I'm out of town and won't be attending but Gary Bivings and Alex Clover from The Bivings Group will be there.  Say hi.

(4) State of the News Media 2007

An annual report on the state of journalism from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.  Via The Beta Stage. 

Our team here at TBG has written about the Wii/PS3 controversy on many occasions (also see our ImpactWatch report) over the past few months.  We finally had the chance to take our
"research" to the next level when Todd brought his Wii for a little conference room face-off. (Todd won a Wii courtesy of a Problogger contest and 451Press this winter).

I must admit, I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the Wii.  Rumors of poor graphics and less-than-stellar wii-mote responsiveness had me thinking that maybe the Wii was probably overrated.

I would like to take this opportunity to discredit any rumors about the Wii being crappy.  While my experience with the Wii may be limited to playing Wii sports, I can say for sure that the system is the opposite of crappy…it's fantastic. 

My favorite Wii sport by far was the tennis.  This game is addicting and fast-paced, while learning the basics is quite easy.  Getting to be good at this game is more difficult, as I quickly learned while Todd destroyed me my first couple of times playing, but I had fun anyway and was convinced immediately that I wanted to buy one for myself.

First impressions:

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In the past when a company goofed up with a patron, the snafu remained relatively unknown. The customer likely was disgruntled and either never turned to the company again with their business or thought hard before doing so. Very few people initiated a vicious word of mouth campaign since they have plenty of other things to do besides dissing a company.

However, the Internet enables people to spread their wrath towards a company unhindered by their social network and geographic constraints, and disgruntled customers have harnessed the web to spread their displeasure.  When this happens, it is important for companies to remember that when a customer attacks online, nothing prevents the company from participating in the discussion.  Further, such involvement could help alleviate any PR problems associated with complaints aired online. 

The Internet has changed how customer complaints can spread throughout society. 

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Mark Glaser from Mediashift has a good breakdown of the reader reaction to the recent relaunch of the USA Today website.  As background, USA Today's new site contains a lot of great social features but longtime site visitors have reacted negatively. 

Below is an excerpt of a comment I left on Mark's post:

I think there may be a lesson to be learned though in how to roll these things out. I'm wondering if they did focus groups about the design and new features? Or if they had some beta testers kick the tires a bit before launch? It seems like these steps might have identified problems in the site's usability before a broader launch.

Most of the problems people are having are usability issues that it is nearly impossible for designers/developers who are in the weeds to notice (I've been there). It seems like these steps might have helped.

I'm a big fan of USA Today's new features.  I'm just curious as to whether they took these steps (they may very well have). 

Would you like to ask a politician or a political candidate a question? OK, maybe only if you're a political junkie, but now you don't have to track them down and get their attention in a personal setting. In fact, you can ask a politician a question using the same machine that allows you to read this post.

Back in the day (early last year) this option was not readily used, but now you can ask politicos like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President George Bush, and Senator Hillary Clinton questions via your computer and Internet connection.

Last year, German business student Caveh Valipour Zonooz and some cohorts developed a site where normal folk could post text, audio, and video questions for the chancellor on a website named Direkt zur Kanzlerin (Straight to the Chancellor), and after thousands of submitted questions Merkel noticed and she — her PR advisers, that is — started answering. Perhaps she'll answer some questions on her weekly podcast (not radio message) sometime.

Merkel is not the only lady responding to on-line questions. Shortly after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for US President in the 2008 election she held a video conference where she used Internet video to field questions from normal folk. Even Senator John McCain who is also running for President is accepting video questions via YouTube.

Now that politicians are cozying up to answering questions posted on-line some Americans want President Bush and political candidates to do the same. In a project related to Direkt zur Kanzlerin, Straight2thePresident.com and Straight2theCandidates.com aim to empower Americans to ask questions like Germans.   These sites will launch in April of this year.

While no one can compel politicians to answer questions on-line, everyone can see the questions. Jeff Jarvis recently told Faith Salie on PRI's Fair Game that it is important to see what questions politicians don't answer.

Thus, the Internet has not only enabled people to more effectively dig up dirt on politicians, it allows them to see questions that they will not answer. Politicians should also worry about what they are not doing on-line — not just macaca moments.