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One of the more significant trends in online politics and public affairs over the last few years has been the rise of Social Action Networks.

A Social Action Network is an online community that allows members to connect and organize around shared political passions.  If visiting a social network like Facebook is like walking into a bar, visiting a Social Action Network is like walking into a campaign headquarters. 

With prominent examples such as My.BarackObama.com and our own Push.Pickensplan.com, Social Action Networks are changing the way political and public affairs work is performed. 

Social Action Networks (SANs):

• Tend to focus on creating substantial change for an issue, movement or political candidate.
• Serve as a hub where people can become members of a particular movement for change.
• Have the potential to globally connect like-minded people around issues that they care about.
• Encourage members to share their view and thoughts while contributing content and building awareness for a cause.
• Encourage their members to transform their passion on an issue into action.
• Provide opportunities for members to participate both within the network and offline.
• Are transparent and allow for uncensored and open discussions to take place between members.
• Usually have specific outlined goals

These are just a few focus points on Social Action Networks. If you are thinking about starting one, be prepared to roll up your sleeves. It can be a lot of work, but it’s a terrific way to build awareness for your organization or movement. 

In the upcoming weeks we’ll address what you should put on your to do list, talk about what to avoid, discuss ways to build your Social Action Network, and provide examples of successful case studies.

Yesterday on Twitter I started seeing links pop up to what looked to be a URL shortening service run by the Republican National Committee – www.gop.am.  The site has “gop” in the URL and has branding consistent with the main RNC site – www.gop.com.  So it seemed reasonable to assume it was put out by the RNC. 

But if you look closely, it seems more likely that it is an independent effort meant to look like something put out by the RNC. As you’ll see from the screenshot below, the site doesn’t include an RNC copyright or the financial disclosure information (“Paid for by the Republican National Committee…”) that you’ll find on any official political website. 

Instead, the site is attributed to a firm called Political Media, which doesn’t list the RNC on its client list.  I also couldn’t find any mention of the service on the RNC Twitter account or website.  So I think it is safe to assume that this is an unofficial effort. 

As a side note, I do think it is a pretty good idea to launch branded URL shortening services.  It is easy to do, and with the ubiquity of Twitter I think it is a pretty good way to subconsciously brand your content.  However, the implementation on GOP.am is heavy handed.  Here is a sample link to give you an idea what it looks like, with a screenshot below. 

I see two fairly major problems from a usability standpoint:

1. There is no easy way to close the frame that is around the content.  So once someone clicks on a gop.am URL, they are pretty much stuck with the frame until they go in the URL bar and manually type in another URL. 
2. Many URL shorteners don’t put framing around the content at all, and the ones that do use subtle colors that don’t clash with the end website and make sure not to take up much space.  The red here is simply overpowering.  Worse, on gop.am we’ve got significant framing on both the top and bottom of the page.  It is just way too much.

So in summary, I would never use www.gop.am out of respect to the people I share links with.  It has too many usability problems.

What do you think?  And please let me know if I’m wrong about the ownership of the service.

Update: And five minutes after I completed this post, GOP.am was taken down with a note saying it will be back soon.  I bet the RNC got in touch.

Update 2: Looks like I was wrong.  It is back up. 

Update 3: Via Ali Akbar on Twitter, the new version of www.gop.am includes slightly different branding.  The logo has been changed to look less like the official RNC logo.  I’ll be the RNC gave them a call requesting this change as a condition for allowing the site to stay up.

Old Logo

Redone Logo

Update 4: The site is officially not run by the RNC.  It now contains this disclaimer: “GOP.am is a property of Political Media, Inc. The Republican National Committee is not responsible for any content generated by GOP.am.”

Update 5: Wired has a story on the tool, which says the site was taken down for a few hours today as a result of GOP opponents overriding the site with porn links.

Congressmen Tim Ryan (D-OH) launched his own custom social network yesterday, using the Ning platform.  In and of itself, this isn’t particularly notable.  Lots of politicians have launched their own Ning networks.  However, in every case I know of the focus of the socnet has been on winning elections, and the networks have been launched under the banner of a campaign web program. 

Ryan has done something entirely different here.  His network was built as an extension of his official House web presence, and is a tool for him to communicate openly with his constituents.  Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but I believe Ryan is the first House or Senate member to launch their own social network for the purpose of connecting with their constituents.

Rules for web communications in the House and Senate are notoriously archaic, so the fact that Ryan was able to launch this strikes me as a significant step.  It will be interesting to see how the network does, and if others follow Ryan’s lead. 

The Bivings Group powers the Personal Democracy Forum website and is proud to run Twitterslurp, a Twitter hashtag aggregator tool being used by those attending and monitoring this year’s European Personal Democracy Forum Conference, currently being held in Barcelona.

Use #pdfeu to join hundreds of attendees of the conference, which focuses on the many connections between politics and technology and the leaders of both industries across Europe.

Speakers, participants and sponsors are using Twitterslurp today and Saturday to share ideas on the conference’s most compelling topics and panels, including Friday’s opening address on how President Obama’s technology team helped him win the American presidency and Saturday’s keynote on mobile platforms for change.

The Bivings Group is proud to work with the Washington Area Women’s Foundation, which held its annual leadership luncheon Tuesday. The luncheon featured more than 1,000 guests at Washington’s Grand Hyatt to recognize the supporters and partner organizations involved in the Foundation, all working to improve the lives of women and girls in the Washington metropolitan area.

Among other things, the luncheon showcased some of the Foundation’s most prominent leaders and key grantee partners. Journalists and mother-daughter team Cokie and Rebecca Roberts moderated a discussion with grantee partner organizations and some of the women who have benefitted from such projects.

Attendees also watched an animation created by the RP3 Agency, a creative partner of the foundation.

The Bivings Group’s Director of Client Services Andrew MacDowell will be speaking at the Association of American Political Consultants conference Monday to address the success and strategy behind social action networks such as the one built around the Pickens Plan.

The conference, held in Washington, features industry leaders in political consulting who work to optimize political campaign power both on and offline.

TBG has worked since summer 2008 on the Pickens Plan and its social action network, Push, an online community of over 200,000 members. The Push “New Energy Army,” along with other active users on the Pickens Plan site, have sent over one million messages to legislators and media decision makers pushing energy independence. The Plan was also honored as AAPC’s Best Public Affairs Campaign of the year.

For those attending the conference, MacDowell will be featured in Monday’s 11:00 a.m. session on “Consultant Case Studies.”

I’m not breaking any news here by telling you that the Republican National Committee launched a significant site redesign yesterday.  After spending some time going through it, I have mixed feelings about the new site.  While I admire the boldness of what they are trying to do, I think in an effort to develop a strong online brand the GOP messed up some of the basics.  I also know that the best sites improve in an iterative nature over time, so I suspect many of the problems I see will be addressed in the coming months.  With that, following is the good, the bad, and the ugly of the redesign.

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The Bivings Group this week launched OurIdaho.com , a site by the Idaho Freedom Foundation aimed at increasing government transparency in Idaho by displaying the state’s expenditures.

The site is broken into state expenditure records and employee salary records. State expenditures are documented for the 2008 and 2009 fiscal years, with backlogs to come.

The salary data includes state annual, weekly and hourly salaries from various cities, counties and school districts across the state. Data is added as it is gathered.

Ouridaho.com has gotten press coverage in Idaho based on one city’s refusal to include employee’s first names in salary records. Officials from the city of Coeur d’Alene claimed including first names reveals employee gender, a detail not required by the Freedom of Information act.

“Idaho code indicates very clearly that gender doesn’t have to be disclosed,” city attorney Mike Gridley told the Coeur d’Alene Press, according to 2News.tv. “We’ve honored that statute.” The city eventually agreed to release the first initials of employees, but the matter has not yet been settled.

Although this is the first government transparency site developed by The Bivings Group, other states have taken the lead.

Other private companies run the research and development behind the Kentucky and Nevada sites, while the state governments themselves in Kansas, Missouri and Texas run their own sites.