The Bivings Report - powered by the Bivings Group

Guest post by Jessica Rudis

Two of the biggest announcements made at PDF this year complement each other in an interesting way. The first announcement, made on Monday, was that YouTube had launched a reporting center that teaches citizen journalists skills to improve the quality of their reporting.  The second announcement, and perhaps the biggest news to come out of the conference, was that the U.S. Government has launched a project to increase transparency and accountability, providing open data on a new Web site.

These are complementary because, of course, any properly functioning democracy needs to have an informed citizenry.  For years, people have relied on media gatekeepers to set the national agenda, inform them of current events, and act as government watchdogs.  Of course this has changed in recent years, but it will be exciting to see things change even more when citizens are taught how to be better reporters and given the data necessary to track government spending and activity.

Having an army of citizens to monitor government data and report on what’s going on would be a great thing.  It won’t diminish the role of traditional journalism because there will always be a need for serious investigative journalism.  Journalists will still need to go deeper than what is handed to them to make sure the data is accurate, numbers aren’t being fudged, and that secrets aren’t being kept.  The government may say it is being open and transparent, but it is up to journalists to ensure that that is really the case.

One of the themes of this conference, We.Gov, is becoming a reality.  As long as people stay interested in looking at the government data online (which may be hard, with things like the “Charlie Bit Me” video as competition for attention), we can participate more in our government than any generation before us.  We have already proven that citizen participation on the Internet can affect the tone and impact a political campaign, now we have the opportunity to use the Internet to directly affect policy-making as well.

Ning’s Gina Bianchini talks to Personal Democracy Forum attendees about working with The Bivings Group on The Pickens Plan’s social action network. Video by Alan Haburchak.

Guest post by Alan Haburchak

It seems like there is a certain generally accepted truth about age and ideology in America: Young people are liberal and vote Democratic while the older generation tends to trend more conservative. There's even that old chestnut usually attributed to Winston Churchill: "If you're young and not a liberal you have no heart, if you're old and not a conservative, you have no brain."

That seems like it would make sense, and is certainly backed up by exit polling in the 2008 presidential race where two-thirds of 18-29 year olds voted for Barack Obama. But in a panel at the Personal Democracy Forum today, Simon Rosenberg and Morley Winograd of the New Democrat Network, presented research that showed political leanings are intensely generational. The Millenial Generation (the kids today, born after 1980 with their Facebook and their Twitter) identify as "liberal" almost two to one. No surprise there.

But, the same survey given to Generation X (those born between 1960 and 1980) when they were the age Millenials are now shows over 60% identifying as conservative, and the Boomer generation (born between 1943 and 1960) split almost down the middle. Young people have not always been so overtly liberal minded as they are now, according to Rosenburg and Winograd.

For Rosenberg and Winograd, the reason for this lies in a theory put forth in a 1991 book called Generations. According to the authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, the twentieth century, and actually the last 400 years of human history can be divided into twenty-year four-generation cycles, with each successive generation conforming to a specific type. Todays Millenials are the current cycle's "civic" generation, they're optimisitic and believe in community action and volunteering (the hallmarks of the Obama presidency). The Gen Xers on the other hand come from the "reactive" generation, characterized by self-reliance and entrepreneurship (the political hero of this group: Reagan).

The relevance of all this theorizing, according to Rosenberg and Winograd, is in how it has and will continue to shape the political landscape of the United States. Given how liberal the Millenials are, and the fact that there are more of them than any generation since the Boomers, they will probably dominate at least the next two electoral cycles, if not even farther into the future. This means that if Rosenberg and Winograd are right, the Dems can plan on another big win in 2012 and probably in 2016 as well.

That begs the question, what comes next in the generational cycle? According to the theory, the next generation is going to fall into the "adaptive" category, which means they might be a lot like John McCain's "silent generation," meaning a lot of them will have deeply-held conservative beliefs and will probably wonder how their parents can be so liberal and open-minded. Plus, they'll want to know why the old folks won't shut up about this Face-Twitter thing they used when they were kids.
 

Those of us familiar with rat race involved in nabbing a coveted internship at a well-known news organization know all too well the pressure of stacking your best clips, skills and assets against a sea of competitors.

Those who do get through are usually more than grateful to be working for that news organization for free, but the Huffington Post has changed the game by asking people to bid on and pay for a two-to-three month internship.

"Jumpstart Your Career in the Blogsphere With An Eye Opening Internship at The Huffington Post in New York or Washington," the ad for the internship reads. "Includes: a two-three month internship at The Huffington Post in NYC or D.C. Must be at least 18 years old. NYC is the main office and D.C. is the political office. Winner can choose which location they would like."

The bidding, through CharityBuzz, is currently at $13,000. HuffPo donated the internship, and all proceeds will go to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

The auction has been met with some outrage from members of the media.

“You do the work, and you pay them,” said Colleen McCain Nelson of DallasNews.com. “In the midst of an avalanche of bad news about traditional media, this may be the most disheartening development I’ve encountered.”

Bloggers at MediaBistro’s FishbowlNY ask, “Will the buyer actually work for HuffPo or will someone with deep pockets gift it to a lucky relative or friend?”

A spokesperson for HuffPo said they’re participating because “it’s a good cause,” according to AdAge.com.

Bidding will be open until May 28, and the next minimum bid is at $15,500.

Cross post from the media measurement team at the ImpactWatch Blog

Hypothesis:

IF bacon is great THEN it will rule social media.

Experiment:

Bacon in the Social Media News

1. Bacon explosion – a heart-warming (burning?) recipe involving 2 pounds of bacon wrapped around 2 pounds of sausage. Needless to say, this innovation warranted a write up in the New York Times and won the creators quite a traffic spike – over 16k inbound links and more than 1.5 million blog visitors. (more…)

While Facebook dominates U.S. social networking, similar international platforms are keeping a global monopoly on virtual social life out of reach for the California-based company.

Last year, Facebook sued German social network StudiVZ for violating copyright laws, mimicking its logo, features and service, according to German website, The Local. The two companies are currently battling out of court, but will begin trial in July if an agreement isn’t met.

Despite Facebook’s cries that the StudiVZ stole its design and even hacked into its coding, ReadWriteWeb reports that before all of this chaos, Facebook was actually trying to acquire the social network, which has 5.5 million members in German speaking countries, compared to Facebook’s 2.2 million in the same areas.

Also in the summer of last year, Facebook launched translations of its site in 55 different languages, hoping to increase its spread. Since then, international attention for the giant has increased, but heavy competitors, backed by major U.S. companies, are not ready to step out of the way.

Bebo.com, which is an acronym for “Blog Early, Blog Often” is AOL People Network’s attempt to grab a slice of the social media market, and has become extremely poplar in the United Kingdom and Australia.

So far, Bebo proves to be the most effective aggregator network in use. Bebo’s “Lifestream” pulls your friends and contacts’ updates from Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Delicious, with more in development. Bebo’s also beating Facebook in the mobile race, allowing users to be able to update their pages and send and receive SMS updates and alerts.

Leading the Latin American markets are Orkut.com and Hi5.com. Orkut, the top social networking site in Brazil, according to SocialNetworkingWatch.com, is a Google-owned site aiming to integrate Google’s news and e-mail functions into a social networking platform. Although it hasn’t been able to keep up with Facebook in the U.S., the site is gaining speed here, and growing rapidly in South America and India.

Hi5 is attempting to cash in on the ground lost by MySpace when they overloaded users with entertainment profiles and brand itself as the best-in-class “Social Entertainment Site.” The site has over 62 million unique visitors and month and provides service in over more than 50 languages. The site is partnering with PlaySpan Marketplace and launching a Micropayments plan for Virtual Goods that will allow users to buy music, movies games and books online through their profiles.

Perhaps the most difficult market for Facebook to break is the ever-growing Asian social networking market, simply due to the high level of government web control and company control over users profiles. China’s largest social network, Xiaonei, and Japan’s, Mixi, both forbid applications from third-party users.

On Mixi, only users over 18 are allowed to join, and you must be invited by another user in order to join. Even with all their restrictions, both social networks seem too powerful for Facebook to challenge thus far.

If Facebook truly wants to go global, developers will need to expand their partnerships or acquisitions of international sites in order to tap into each country’s unique social networking needs.It will be interesting to see how the company expands its brand without losing its core

The Bivings Group attended the Politics Online 2009 conference in Washington, DC, earlier this week to listen to and participate in a large-scale dialogue on how technology is and is going to change the political landscape. Here are a few important lesions I learned.

1. Politicians are getting technical

Actual politicians, not just their IT and communications departments, are learning how to use web tools. Secretaries of State and members of Congress addressed conference attendees on how they’re using new technologies to make their jobs more effective and to improve communication with constituents. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is working with Google on the Google Voting Information Project.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen manages her own Facebook and Twitter accounts, rather than handing the task off to an assistant. The cost of stressing out her communications team a bit is worth it for Secretary Bowen to connect directly with Californians.

(more…)

While doing some research for a talk I gave a few weeks ago, I came across a fantastic blog called “Found in the Cache” that examines how hospitals are using the social web.  The blog’s author, Ed Bennett, is tracking which hospitals maintain their are own blogs and have launched presences on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.  Below are the pure numbers:

• 206 unique hospitals total have some sort of social web presences (one of the items below)
• 124 have YouTube channels
• 117 have Twitter Accounts
• 82  have Facebook pages
• 22 maintain official Blogs

While Bennett does not claim to have searched for presences for every single hospital (or hospital system) in the United States, to put this number in context there are an estimated 5,000 community hospitals in the U.S.  You can view the raw data of Bennett’s findings here.

Interestingly, Bennett has found that Twitter use by hospitals is growing rapidly, and that it will soon be the most popular social tool for hospitals.  The chart below shows the Twitter growth trend as compared to YouTube.

You can view a list of the most popular hospitals on Twitter here.

In reviewing the actual presences the hospitals created, I found the quality of the accounts to be all over the place.  Some truly great work is being done, such as the Twitter account of Henry Ford Health System, which recently got some press for live tweeting during a brain operation.  Other accounts were clearly experiments, with little activity and interaction.   We’re at the beginning of a trend here, with the hospitals using these tools blazing the trail and establishing best practices for others to follow in the years ahead.

I’m going to keep reading Bennett’s blog, as I think the social web has great potential to help hospitals deepen their relationships with the community’s they serve.