Writing about Google, Inc. hits close to home, quite literally, as I am a past townie of Lenoir, North Carolina, which will soon become Google’s latest data farm. As I walked around my hometown a week ago, I began to wonder what the town would look like when the median income of the citizenship raises by $20,000. Moreover, I began to wonder just how much Google actually owns in the world. After some delving, I was shocked to learn that the company is only a few smart business deals away from owning Heaven itself.

Google currently owns over 520 domain names, ranging from ones of which you have already heard to ones that you likely never will. But do not kid yourselves, Google still owns them, and they always will. I predict that in another year, the number will reach approximately 1000 domains.

The company’s slogan has been “Don’t Be Evil” for some time now, although the company learned a sour lesson when dealing with its search engine in China. Unfortunately for the company, evil and big business sometimes go hand in hand. I personally do not blame Google for making the choices that it did, but I do believe that the setting of itself on such a seemingly high moral pedestal is bound to draw criticism until the moniker is dropped. Giving in has never been Google’s strong suit, however, and for good reason. If they had given in to the dark side, they may not have been elected Fortune Magazine’s Top Business for which to work, despite criticism from past employees of ageism and sexism.

If owning a large list of domains, being the top business for which to work, and being “not evil” were not enough, Google also simply owns a lot of…stuff. Some of its most recent acquisitions include YouTube, Tonic Systems, and even a 5% stake in AOL. Most recently, Google acquired DoubleClick, a company that provides Internet ad serving services. The deal was finalized on March 11, 2008. The types of tech that Googles embraces into its corporation are so varied that it leaves me scratching my head at what Google couldn’t acquire.

Lenoir is not going to be known for making great furniture much longer; it is going to be known for googling. You might as well familiarize yourself with Google’s Corporate Homepage; after all, they will own you one day.

A little over a year ago I wrote a post that guessed which emerging technologies would have an impact on the 2008 election cycle. I figured I’d take a quick look back and grade my predictions, as well as list a few new technologies that have emerged since I last covered this ground.

Here are the grades I would give my predictions (original post is here for background):

(1) Ning (Niche Social Networks)

I’d give myself a C on this one. Many of the major Presidential candidates launched niche social networks on their campaign sites, hoping to encourage connections among volunteers. However, none of these niche networks really got that much traction except for Barack Obama’s. And no campaign used the specific service I recommended, Ning (which I think is still worth trying). Ron Paul supporters took the novel approach of trying to turn the entire Internet into a niche social network about Ron Paul, which is another thing entirely. I think there is still something to the idea of niche social networks around campaigns, but most of the action has been taking place on the more established networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

(2) Mozes (Broadcast Text Messaging)

I’d go with a B for this one. The Obama campaign launched a quite aggressive text messaging effort where users are encouraged to text the message “Hope” to 62262 to subscribe to text alerts alerts. Other campaigns have experimented with similar programs. The Obama campaign program works pretty much the exact same way as I described in my post, but no one is using Mozes specifically. It is also really hard to measure the impact of these programs without getting access to subscriber figures.

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Social networking giant Facebook is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to let users download thousand of clips from the filmmaker’s archives.

The VooZoo application, which launched Monday, was developed by FanRocket. The idea is to let individuals re-live some of their favorite scenes and moments from any Paramount film. Clips last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.

Viacom, Paramount Pictures’ parent company, plans to market DVDs through the new tool.

Though FanRocket aims to garner a few hundred thousand users within the first few months, Paramount hasn’t set any revenue goals to its end.

The application features a double-pane window on top – the left side shows the clips you’ve added yourself. On the right, you’ll find a display of your history, with ‘Featured VooHoos,’ or featured clips, just underneath.

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Want further proof of Barack Obama’s popularity online? According to the site Twitterholic, Obama has more followers than any other Twitter user (followers are people who sign up to receive a user’s Twitter updates through the service). Here is a chart showing the top 10 users:

Despite this popularity, Obama’s team doesn’t use the service that aggressively. They have only posted 78 updates. The second most popular user, Robert Scoble, has posted 7,499 updates.

You can visit Obama’s Twitter page here and Twitterholic here.

Update: Twitdir is another great resource for looking at data on top Twitter users.

In 2002 and 2006, we conducted studies that analyzed the features of the campaign websites of folks running for federal office. Our 2002 findings are available here and our 2006 study can be found here.

We are in the planning phases of a 2008 study and are trying to figure out what criteria to check for when reviewing the campaign websites. Below is a list of the criteria we looked at in 2006:

• En Español: Does the website provide a Spanish version?
• News: Does the website provide news and press releases?
• Bio: Does the website provide a biography of the candidate?
• Contacts: Does the website provide adequate contact information?
• Donations: Does the website provide the ability to make donations online?
• Fundraising Campaigns: Does the website provide the ability for voters to organize their own fundraising campaigns?
• Volunteer Forms: Does the website provide a volunteer sign-up form?
• Team Tools: Does the website provide the ability for volunteers to organize and track activity?
• House Parties: Does the website help volunteers set up house parties?
• Downloads: Does the website provide downloadable fliers, web stickers, or other campaign materials?
• Blogs: Does the website offer a blog?
• Podcasts: Does the website offer podcasts?
• Multimedia: Does the website offer audio or video files?
• RSS: Does the website offer an RSS feed?

I think in 2008 we’ll need to look at whether the campaign’s have presences on social networking sites and if they have social networking components on their own sites. We might also need to look at the use of widgets and wikis. We are still very much in the brainstorming phase.

What criteria do you think we should add?

While at the Politics Online Conference yesterday, I attended a rather interesting panel about using cell phones in political and advocacy campaigns.  Some of the panelists represented the One campaign — think Bono — and Rock the Vote.  Since both of these campaigns cater to a younger crowd, they need to use cell phones in connecting with their audiences.

During the panel the representative from Rock the Vote shared an interesting campaign that they just did using text messages.  His organization used their member database to print out voter registration forms and mail them to those people.  All the recipients needed to do was fill in their SSN, sign it, and send it in.  However, Rock the Vote knows that the typical person in their target crowd virtually ignores snail mail.  So they decided to send out a text message to everyone who they sent forms to alerting to them to the fact that the registration form is in their mailbox.  I found that interesting that they would send out something and use another channel as the call to action.  The panelist said that they didn’t have data back yet since they just did this campaign, but I would like to know how effective the text messages were.

Another interesting tidbit from that session was about a health care advocacy group in California that asked people to send it text messages about how they feel about health care as the California State Legislature was debating some new legislation.  This organization then rented out a jumbo-tron and placed it across the street from the legislative chambers.  Thus, when legislators walked outside, they saw text messages about health care from normal citizens on the large screen.

What are some interesting campaigns that you’ve seen involving cell phones?

At the Politics Online conference yesterday, I participated in a panel entitled “Does Good Design Matter” (previous post here). In my opening discussion, I talked briefly about some common mistakes I see people make when building their websites. Here is a quick summary of what I said.

First, I think website design really consists of two things:

1. What the site looks like (the brand)
2. How well the site works (usability)

The instinct of most folks when building a website is to invest a great deal of energy into the overall look and very little into how usable the site is. In my opinion, this gets things backwards. I’m not advocating that people build ugly sites or not pay attentions to looks. Not at all. But, it is important to remember that, on the web, usability has just as much to do with your site’s brand as the overall look does.

Think about it. When you visit a site for the first time you definitely have an immediate reaction that is based entirely on how the site looks. The colors. The fonts. The pictures. Etc. Your brain processes this information quickly and then you go about the business of actually using the site. If the site doesn’t deliver in a usability sense (things are hard to find, forms don’t work, error messages aren’t in place, etc.), all the good will built up by that good first impression will be thrown out the window and the user will be left with a bad impression of your organization.

So my first piece of advice to folks building websites is to invest as much energy in usability as you do in agonizing over colors and font choices.

Second, always remember that content is the driving force behind any website. Design is there to serve the content. A blog that isn’t updated is going to fail no matter how pretty it is. The slickest tool for writing letters to the editor isn’t going to get used if you don’t provide a compelling reason for people to act.

Too many people think design is a panacea that can cover up content problems. “If we make our site really cool with lots of Flash animation and stuff, maybe people won’t notice that we only have two pages of content.” It doesn’t work. People know.

We actually struggled with this ourselves in developing our site, www.bivings.com. We got stuck trying to build something really design heavy and slick a few years back, because we weren’t focused enough on the conent. Below is what I wrote about our own struggles a few years back:

We’ve been contemplating a redesign of the main Bivings site for a couple of years, but the path forward only became clear the last few months. When thinking about a redesign previously we fell victim to our own ambition. We had grand plans and wanted to create something that was perfect. This sort of led to paralysis. We didn’t follow our own advice, which is to focus on usability and design that serves the content.

We finally started making progress when we shifted the focus to our blog. We decided to keep www.bivings.com really simple and not to overwhelm folks with lots of brochure content they don’t want to read anyway. We brought our blog content front and center. Our goal with the new site is to tell the story of our company a little bit every day by writing about the projects we are working on and the things we are passionate about. We think this will be much more effective than producing some sort of slick, heartless brochure site.

So my second piece of advice would be to figure out your content strategy in advance of even contemplating a redesign.

Without compelling content, your website is not going to work that well no matter how slick the design.

I'm attending the Politics Online Conference today and tomorrow, and there was an interesting discussion during the opening session titled "Pervasive Politics" that Joe Mansour blogged about at TechRepublican.com. The session focused on how we as individuals will be bombarded with political information everywhere we go — not just online or through traditional media.  Think about political ads on your cell phone… (more…)

In mid-November I wrote a post featuring nine technology predictions for late 2007 and early 2008. Some of those were quite forward-looking (up to 6 months). Some were not. Below I go over the predictions I made whose time has already come and gone.

1. The ASUS Eee laptop is going to sell like hotcakes over the holiday season and other manufacturers will soon follow suit in creating light, barebones, home-use laptops. Predicted for mid-January.
This prediction, while it wasn’t particularly hard to make, actually came true. As a result, other manufacturers are tripping over themselves to try to get a piece of the sub-notebook market. Just check out a search for “eee” on Gizmodo…
Right on!

2. RIM will release a 3G Blackberry and the Curve will prove to have been a huge success. Predicted for mid-February.
The Pearl is now 3G on Sprint, likely with others to follow soon and the Curve has been a massive hit for RIM.
Right on!

3. The Wii will outsell all other game consoles, but the number of game sales per owner will be significantly lower than on other platforms. Predicted for mid-February.
Yay! Another prediction come true, kind of …
Just on.

4. Google will embrace OpenID and it will finally take off. Predicted for mid-February.
This hasn’t happened But who’s to say it won’t in the future? I think it might in the next 3 months so I’m going to extend this prediction a little longer…
Wrong.

5. The Blu-Ray and HD-DVD camps will start collaborating and the price of Bu-Ray and HD-DVD media will be sub-$20. Predicted for mid-May.
This prediction looked 6 months forward from the date of the original post, but we may as well write it off as HD-DVD is now officially dead, which I inferred would happen earlier in the year (no crystal ball was that necessary for that one after Warner stopped supporting HD-DVD).
Wrong.

So, discounting Google and OpenID and my generous extension of my own prediction deadline by 3 months, 3 out 4, as Meatloaf might say, ain’t bad. More updates in another 3 months…