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. 

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

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.

The Good

(1) While some have criticized the feature, I like having the faces of the people that make up the GOP worked into the logo at the top of the page.  It is a nice branding touch and helps humanize the Party.  I wish I could click to get more information about the person featured, and why they support the GOP, however.

(2) I like both the Heroes and Faces sections.  Once again, good branding I think.

(3) It is clear that some really talented designers worked on the project.  While they clearly spent some time on the Obama site, some of the design detail work is really well done, and appreciated (example below).

(4) The site allows users to login via Open ID and Facebook, meaning you don’t have to create an account on the site to participate.  That is great.

(5) It doesn’t look like any campaign site I’ve seen before, and given where the GOP is at, I think that is a good thing.

The Bad

(1) The site is blog heavy, prominently featuring nine different blogs in the Discuss tab in the main navigation menu.  While I appreciate the blog-based approach, the titles of many of the blogs are unclear (Sound Reasoning, Stomping Grounds, Say It Loud, etc.), meaning there is no easy way for me to figure out which I’m interested in besides diving in and trying to read them all.  There is also no place on the site that I see where I can actually read ALL of the blog content in one spot.  The end result of confusing, and I think will be a roadblock in any of them gaining a significant readership.  I would build a page quickly that aggregates all the blogs in one spot so people can more easily pick and choose what they want to read.

(2) The main call for users to sign up for email updates is hidden behind a click.  While I appreciate this as a user who is already on their list, as someone who builds sites for a living I would never want a user to have to click more than once to give me their email.  I’m a firmly believer in making the sign up process as simple as possible.

(3) Frankly, the homepage doesn’t contain a lot of content and features a lot of open space.  The homepage focuses almost exclusively on branding, and very little on the dissemination of information.  Given all the content the RNC produces, I think long term the homepage will need to become more dynamic so the RNC can use it to actually highlight what they are doing.   I would expect the balance between branding/news/action to evolve a bit in the coming months.

(4) Along similar lines, I really don’t think the RNC needs to feature a Facebook/YouTube/Twitter/Flickr widget so prominently on its homepage. I don’t get why you’d want to devote all the space to promoting your presence on Facebook when you have just launched a huge social network on your own site?  Why not highlight some activity from Our GOP as a way of encouraging visitors to join?

(5) This is entirely a personal preference, but the site is really red and I’m not a big fan of red on the web.  I understand that the RNC is trying to do for red what the Obama site did for blue, but for me personally it is just too much.

The Ugly

(1) On launch day, the site suffered some down time and a variety of other technical problems which were catalogued gleefully by the press and critics.  While it marred launch date, these problems will be forgotten very quickly.

(2) When the site launched, Chairman Steele’s blog was called “What Up.”  After the name was met with ridicule, the RNC renamed the blog “Change the Game.” I’ll just say that I think the new name is a pretty dramatic improvement.

What do you think of the new site?

Update: Wes Donahue has a good review of the new RNC site.  He mentions one thing that I forgot to include in the Ugly section – Mini Michael.  When you first go to the site a virtual Michael Steele walks across the site to do an intro, like Mitt Romney’s site did back in the day.  Not a fan.

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.

“New York City is the media capital of the world, but, with the industry undergoing profound changes, it’s incumbent on us to take steps now to capitalize on growth opportunities and ensure we remain an industry leader,” Bloomberg said in a press conference, according to the New York Times.

Among the eight programs is the establishment of a media lab modeled after those at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
The lab will “issue a request for proposals from universities and other organizations interested in providing space for lectures, workshops and other events that would being together media professionals,” The Times reported.

Other initiatives include recruiting entrepreneurs from around outside of the city, seeking rising starts from emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, Silicon Valley and the Boston area, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In his press conference, Mayor Bloomberg estimated the city’s media industry makes up about 10 percent of its private sector, adding up to around 300,000 jobs. The new initiatives aim to create 8,000 new jobs over the next 10 years and will cost the city about $1.5 million.

A spokesman for the organization behind the initiatives, The New York City Economic Development Corporation, said a focus on new media companies will help curb the slow-down of traditional media development and the plan is based on past lessons learned.

“We know that 10 years ago, when you look at some of the media giants, many were not even incorporated yet, and is they were, many were just tiny entities,” NYCEDC Vice President of Public Affairs David Lombino told PRWeek.

The project follows a similar push in January to keep financial employees in the city, and after tacking media, NYCEDC will focus on curtailing slowing retail business.

While attending the Personal Democracy Forum, I listened to a panel discussion that included Todd Zeigler of The Bivings Group, Heather Lauer of the Pickens Plan, Roz Lemieux of Fission Strategy, and moderator/Washington Post, Jose Antonio Vargas.

The focus of the panel was how social networks and the social web are changing politics.

During initial introductions Lauer shared that the Pickens Plan concept came together last minute. There was an initial meeting last June, and in a few days a campaign was launched. She stressed that when it came to the Pickens Plan social network, a lot of control was given up. Providing this openness for its members has resulted in great success.

“Members of the Pickens Plan are the ambassadors and leaders who will go for war for you,” added Zeigler. He also shared that turning the online activity to offline action is the Holy Grail for the online community. It was interesting to learn that email is still considered the killer app.

Roz Lemieux stated that for many organizations, social networks are still an uphill battle. And for those invested, they would be wise to see the social web as a gift economy. Give more than you take and you will see great results.

Jose Vargus asked the panel to expand on the risks of social networks.

Zeigler stated that organizations continue to have an ongoing fear of being painted unfavorable based on comments made on the various socnets they manage. “I hope we are beyond that point. If you are going to launch a network, you’ve got to have a plan.”

Lemieux felt that a legitimate fear is that an organization may not have the staff to manage or respond at the level that is demanded by the social web.

“The benefits far outweigh the fear. By opening up the community, members are more invested and self moderate,” shared Lauer.

An audience member asked an interesting question on the importance of mobile outreach and its effectiveness.

Roz Lemieux shared that her experience with text messaging may have been too early too soon. On a previous outreach attempt, her audience wasn’t quite ready for mobile organization. She did add this was before mobile technology matured to where it is at now.

Jose Vargus did state for Obama, text messaging was successful, however, it’s still a medium that hasn’t been looked at as well as it should.

“Texting is a more viable solution. Getting people to make a phone call via email is less than 1% success rate. Very difficult to do,” added Lemieux.

Vargus made and important point that developing economies that do not have broadband or computers, will do everything to keep their cell phones charged or communicate via text.

You can catch video highlights of the panel discussion here and here.