Who’s Talking: Twitter Rankings At PdF

For the past two years of the Personal Democracy Forums, The Bivings Group's Twitterslurp tool has been used to track and analyze discussion about the conference that is taking place on Twitter.  One of the reasons the Twitterslurp has been so popular is the leaderboard feature, which lists the Twitter users that have tweeted the most.  At this year conference, in addition to listing the users who tweet the most, we also recorded how many times a users Twitter handle was mentioned by other users.   Below is the Twitterslurp leaderboard for 2010, reordered to list the 20 Twitter users who were mentioned the most by other users. Note that this data is as of 3:30 pm on Friday, June 4.  We'll update on Monday after the conference is over.

#1. Jordan Raynor , 348 mentions President, Direct Media Strategies

#2. Clay Shirky , 288 mentions Author of "Here Comes Everybody" and teacher at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program

#3. Craig Newmark , 207 mentions The founder of Craigslist and a first-day speaker on "Tech For Change"

#4. Eli Pariser , 195 mentions Board President and former Executive Director of MoveOn.org

#5. Ethan Zuckerman , 191 mentions Senior researcher, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University

#6. Deanna Zandt , 189 mentions Media technologist and author of "Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking"

#7. Allison Fine , 169 mentions Author of  "Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age" and with Beth Kanter, "The Networked Nonprofit"

#8. Scott Heiferman , 169 mentions An MIT Technology Review ""Innovator of the Year" and Co-Founder & CEO of "Meetup", the world's largest network of local community groups

#9. Tim O'Reilly , 168 mentions The founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc.

#10. Micah Sifry , 157 mentions Co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum and TechPresident.com

#11. Beth Kanter , 162 mentions The author of "Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media" and co-author of "The Networked Nonprofit" with Allison Fine

#12. Alex Howard , 151 mentions Government 2.0 correspondent for O'Reilly Media

#13. Andrew Rasiej , 147 mentions Futurist, social entrepreneur, and Founder of the Personal Democracy Forum

#14. Markos Moulitsas , 146 mentions Founder and publisher of Daily Kos political community

#15. Susan Crawford , 135 mentions Served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, faculty member of the University of Michigan Law School

#16. Howard Rheingold , 125 mentions Author of "Tools for Thought", "The Virtual Community" and "Smart Mobs"

#17. The Bivings Group , 113 mentions Full-service internet communications firm and sponsor of PDF 2010

#18. Dominic Campbell , 104 mentions Founder of FutureGov, a consultancy and social innovation incubator shaping the future of government

#19. Ellen Miller , 103 mentions Co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation

#20. Civico Live , 100 mentions A practical online democracy engagement platform, allowing fully live streaming of PdF

Tackling Design at the Personal Democracy Forum Conference

The Bivings Group is a proud sponsor of this year’s Personal Democracy Forum conference, being held next Thursday and Friday in New York. This year, we’ll be hosting a panel discussion focusing on critical issues surrounding design in political web development.

As a firm, TBG has worked with dozens of political candidates and issue advocacy groups through the years, and our talented designers have seen it all. “Political Web Design: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” will take a dive into what works, what doesn’t and what we wish we’d never see online again.

Panelists Tom McCormick, senior vice president, creative and production services here at TBG, Michael Turk, CRAFT Media/Digital founder and partner, and Allyson Kapin, a partner at Rad Campaign, will lend their expert analysis to recent trends in political web design.

We’re going with a more interactive panel this year, engaging the audience by requesting their votes on some of this year’s best, worst and ugliest.

If you’re attending PdF, come participate on Thursday, June 3 from 3:30-4:30 and make sure to stop by the TBG booth while you’re there.

Last year, we hosted a panel discussion focused on social action networks, where we used the Pickens Plan as a case study in how to engage users on multiple levels and build a strong supporter base. 

Pakistan’s Media Ban: Limiting Access and Spurring Action

When I traveled around Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital last month on an independent reporting project, all the sources I encountered under the age of 40 asked me the same question: “Are you on Facebook?”

The social networking site is massively popular in the Islamic republic, and this week’s ban – and subsequent banning of YouTube and nearly 1,000 other social sites – stifles the communication of a population with very few social freedoms.

The ban, set in place Wednesday, resulted from an admittedly ill-advised Facebook group calling for celebrations and submissions of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” Depicting the prophet is  forbidden in Islam.

While Pakistan is led by a notoriously tight government, they have one of the most open media systems in the world. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ushered in an age of journalism allowing dozens of new TV news channels and publications to flourish. While not all of the reporting is responsible, Pakistanis have enjoyed open access to media sources, including websites, for some time.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, which implemented the bans, reacted to the protests of thousands across the country offended by the Facebook group, so the ban is not coming only from the government, but from its citizens.

“I am in favour of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. But there needs to be a fine line drawn. Otherwise freedom of expression can turn into freedom to offend,” Pakistani blogger Kashif Aziz said in a BBC News interview.

Another blogger, however, took the side of many of Pakistan’s young voices, saying although only 8 percent of Pakistanis have internet access, but that it provides a critical means of communication and expression.

"The internet has become a way of life itself. If they continue to block things, this is going to hinder Pakistan’s progress,” said Dr. Awab Alvi to the BBC.

The ban on Facebook could be in place until May 31, and the date for lifting the wall to other sites are being addressed individually.

Digsby Launches Chatroulette for Facebook

Digsby has created a new Facebook application allowing you to “video chat with all your Facebook friends for the first time ever right from the Facebook website and post screenshots of your ChatVille adventures to Facebook albums.” If you are not already using it, Digsby is the best all in one instant messaging platform out there. While I prefer to use TweetDeck to manage my own as well as our company social networking channels, the ability to integrate Gchat and Windows Messenger into one application (as well as AIM, Yahoo and ICQ, but who uses those anymore?!?) and to then create custom groupings of friends, coworkers and clients is especially convenient. Thankfully we have already covered Chatroulette but after receiving the pop-up notification from Digsby, (great potential for advertising?) I decided that in the interests of science, I would sign up. After acquiescing to the mandatory Facebook soul privacy-signing-away, I was ready to go:
Initial reactions:
1. Not (yet) fully  integrated with Digsby IM Client.

Maybe this is coming, but  just like you have to be signed into Gmail with a browser to take advantage of Gchat’s video feature, you have to be signed into Facebook and using the ChatVille application to video chat with your Faceobok friends. (Regular Facebook chat is integrated into Digsby.)  Digsby already includes an excellent a video chat feature allowing  you and a friend to video chat without both of you using Digsby,  but integrating the option to video chat with friends and random people directly from their standalone IM client would, if technically possible be interesting. Not to say that I would use it, but I could see it becoming popular. (See: Facebook Chat- A Window to Your Soul). 

Continue reading “Digsby Launches Chatroulette for Facebook” »

Reclaim your Facebook Privacy

Matt Pizzimenti is concerned about how Facebook’s privacy policies and settings have evolved over the last little bit; that is why he started the ReclaimPrivacy project.  He has created an application that people can easily use after they login into their Facebook account. 

The application scans their privacy settings and provides alerts about several settings that one can use to hide various aspects of their account from anyone’s view.  One of the things that I particularly like about this application is that it provides instant links to the place where a person can adjust their settings to ensure that their information is only shared with those with whom they desire. 

Pizzimenti links to several recent articles that explain that Facebook’s recent actions have aggravated privacy advocates.  One thing that has irked them is that in some cases new settings have default values that allow the site to share account holders’ information with the public. Pizzimenti’s application will help individuals better understand all of the privacy vulnerabilities that they face.  It appears that it will flag any setting that is set to share information with Everyone (versus "Only Me" or only friends).  However, the application does not change anyone’s settings; it simply alerts them to vulnerabilities.  I think that this is an excellent idea since some people may want to have some information publicly available as this facilitates people finding them.

Regardless of how one feels about Facebook’s actions towards privacy, it is a good idea to continually examine one’s account settings on a social networking site.