Yesterday The Bivings Group launched our latest client site Living Conversations, a community-based website for breast cancer survivors. The site encourages survivors to submit their stories via video and the written word as a way of providing strength and support to anyone coping with the disease. We’re happy of the way the site turned out, and to be associated with such a cool organization.

Working on the site also gave us the chance to try out a few things we hadn’t attempted before. Given that, I figured I’d give a little look under the hood and explain how the site was constructed.

The site is built using using the open source Content Management System Drupal. As mentioned previously, we pretty much build all our website these days in Drupal or Wordpress. We chose to use Drupal for this site due to the community features that were required and the varied content types on the site. We also wanted to leave the Living Conversations folks with the ability to quickly expand the functionality on the site should they choose to.

Working from Drupal, we added a great deal of additional functionality to the site through a combination of custom coding and the use of Drupal modules and plugins. Here is the breakdown of the ones we used:

(1) Video Uploading. A central aim of Living Conversations is to get breast cancer survivors to tell their stories via video. This required us to develop a way for users to upload videos to the site and then to display dynamically in various spots on Living Conversations. We did this using a combo of the Video module and a plugin that allows for the uploading of videos to a Blip.tv account. So basically users can upload a video on Living Conversations and it will FTP directly into their Blip account and show up on the site. Cool stuff.

Note that the Video module in Drupal is very easy to use. If you want to use the Blip.tv upload plugin, you are going to need to have some developers around as it is a bit tricky.

(2) Content Rating. The site allows registered users to rate content using a five point start system. This was implemented using Voting API as the backend and Voting to control the methodology used for the rating on the frontend. They work together.

(3) User Profiles. Out of the box, Drupal has a powerful Profile module built in. This allows registered users to create profiles on the site. Administrators to add just about any fields they want to capture to this profile field. We supplemented this with Buddy List, which allows users to add other users as contacts and track their activities on the site.

Those are the big ones. We also used Flag Content and Syndication to add some minor functionality to the site.

Anyway, check out www.livingconversations.com if you get a chance. Let us know what you think in the comments.

This week alone four co-workers/clients/friends have asked me how they can save videos off of YouTube to their local computer.  I’ve tried doing this a million different ways over the years and have settled on a pretty simple solution: I use Keepvid to do it. 

Keepvid allows you to grab a source FLV file from most video sharing sites (YouTube, Blip.tv, etc.) simply by copying the URL of the video you want into the site.  Keepvid then spits back a link to the source file, you right click and save as and you are on your way.  The only complication is that you have to change the extension of the file you save from “.html” to “.flv” after saving.  Works like charm, although I’ve mostly used it for YouTube videos.

My previous method was to use the Video Downloader extension in Firefox.  I found it to be somewhat buggy and annoying to use.  Keepvid is much simpler. 

If you are interested in diving into this topic in more depth, you should check out CNet’s breakdown of the different ways to save videos.

Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) recently launched a new campaign website that I find vaguely fascinating.  The site doesn’t look like any campaign site I’ve seen before and relies heavily on video.  Campaign sites have a tendency to all look the same and I applaud Chambliss for not being afraid to try something different. 

However, two things:

(1) On my laptop I actually have to scroll down on the homepage to find a Contribute or Join link and access the main site navigation.  Call me old school, but I think this stuff needs to be more prominent.  Design conventions exist because they help people navigate your website and quickly find what they are looking for.  Usability matters.

(2) Video is great, but you have to back it up with text.  The site features Chambliss talking about a variety of issues via web video, but nowhere on the site is there text expanding on the videos points.  Web developers should always remember that not everyone wants to watch your video and that the web is still primarily about reading good old fashioned text.  There is also this little site called Google that does much better with text than FLV files. 

Regardless, I would like to thank Chambliss for taking the road less traveled with his site.

<Via TechRepublican>

Micah Sifry’s post last week about YouTube metrics got me thinking about which videos produced by the campaigns have been viewed the most on YouTube. Following is a list of Dem Presidential candidate videos that have attracted more than 200,000 YouTube views. I’ve excluded YouTube spotlight videos, since they tend to attract a ton of views no matter the candidate/quality of the question.

(1) Hillary Clinton: I Need Your Advice (627,335 views)

Clinton asks for help in picking her campaign song.

(2) Hillary Clinton: Pick My Campaign Song Take 2 (337,366 views)

Follow up to video #1 above that is a mash up of responses sent in by users.

(3) Barack Obama: My Plans for 2008 (334,261 views)

Video in which Barack Obama announces the formation of his exploratory committee and discusses his rationale for running.

(4) John Edwards: Ann Coulter on Good Morning America (294,280 views)

Video of Ann Coulter saying she wished John Edwards’ had been killed by a terrorist assassination plot.

(5) Mike Gravel: Campaign Finance Reform (275,855 views)

A video posted by the Gravel campaign in response to a leftover question from the YouTube debate.

(6) Barack Obama: Opposition from the Start (239,822 views)

Clips of Obama over the years expressing his opposition to the Iraq war.

(7) John Edwards: Hair (230,784 views)

Viral video produced by the Edwards’ campaign in response to the notorious Feeling Pretty video. First aired at the YouTube debate.

(8) Bill Richardson: Job Interview (208,210 views)

Viral video that highlights Richardson’s qualifications for the Presidency.

I’d classify these videos as follows:

• Numbers 1, 2, 7 and 8 (50%) are your classic viral videos put out to draw attention to the candidate/attract page views/raise money. They are heavy on humor and not issue oriented at all.
• Numbers 3, 5 and 6 (37.5%) are more issue-oriented videos, but have viral qualities all the same. The Gravel campaign smartly piggy backing off the YouTube debate to get some attention. The first Obama video piggy backed off the media coverage of his announcement while the second potently explains the difference between Obama and the other Dem front runners on Iraq.
• Number 4 (12.5%) is a rapid response video that was distributed widely by the Edwards’ campaign as part of a fundraising pitch.

I don’t really have a big point here, but I think anyone who reviews that list sees that successful YouTube videos don’t just come out of nowhere. They are the result of good planning/production and smart timing. In other words there is a real strategy to being successful on YouTube.

Fred Thompson Disclaimer 

I’m a big fan of the Facebook, MySpace and Technorati stats TechPresident is keeping on the 2008 Presidential candidates. These stats are a good measure of the amount of traction each candidate is getting in those communities and on the web overall.

The YouTube stats, however, are really deceptive due to the vastly different ways candidates are using YouTube. As an example, here is the chart showing YouTube views for each Democrat’s main channel.

Pretty clear, right? Obama leads and Edwards recently overtook Hillary for second place. Edwards is getting more buzz for his online videos than Hillary.

Actually, no. Edwards’ numbers are artificially inflated because he is using YouTube as the primary player for all of his videos on his website. Meanwhile, Obama is using Brightcove to play videos on his website while Hillary is using what looks to be a player created in house.

So we’re comparing apples and oranges here: all of Edwards’ video plays are being compared to maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of Obama’s and Hillary’s views. I’d venture to guess that in terms of actual views Edwards is pretty firmly in third place.

As an aside, earlier in the campaign the Clinton campaign was slow to post videos to YouTube, hoping to make people come to their site to view all of her videos. In response, Patrick Ruffini started downloading Clinton’s videos and posting them to YouTube in an effort to divert traffic. Ruffini (and others) probably cost Hillary’s YouTube channel 400,000+ views by doing this.

The Clinton campaign has caught on and now appears to be driving traffic to YouTube by linking to the YouTube version of the video right on their site. You can see an example here. I don’t remember seeing this before.

Fred Thompson disclosure.

In all the talk about the Ron Paul online machine, there has been very little discussion of his actual campaign website, which has recently undergone a facelift. His approach is novel. Instead of building an infrastructure on his own campaign website. like most candidates have done, Paul has created a portal to his presences on various third party websites.

The Paul website itself essentially consists of a homepage, an issues section, a bio page, a donation form, a sign up form and a blog. Interestingly for the social candidate, his blog doesn’t even allow comments. Instead, it encourages visitors to discuss/interact with the blog content on social sites like Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Facebook. He seems to deliberately avoid building a community on his own site. Due to this, supporters have no choice but to organize elsewhere.

Paul relies on third party tools for fundamental aspects of his website:

(1) Videos are entirely hosted and served from his YouTube account.

(2) Campaign news gathering and discussion of said news is done via Digg. Paul is the only candidate I’ve seen that includes a prominent link to a Digg search of his name right on his own homepage.

(3) Paul’s schedule is kept exclusively on Eventful.

(4) Supporters are encouraged to create their own events on Meetup.

(5) Campaign gear is sold exclusively through a store hosted by Cafe Press.

(6) All photos are on Flickr.

(7) Social networking occurs on Facebook and MySpace.

His website is basically a mashup of all this stuff, with only a few core functions being performed by the website itself. Lots of campaigns have played around with this stuff. Paul is the only one I’ve seen that truly relies on these tools to perform mission critical campaign functions.

Obviously, as a long shot candidate with a limited budget, the use of these free tools is done out of necessity. But the strategy here is also very sound: by not giving supporters much to do on his own site he maximizes the amount of noise they make in other venues. It is the perfect approach for an insurgent candidate like Paul.

As 2008 grows nearer, I’d expect other insurgent candidates to mimic the Paul approach. Front runners? Not so much at this point. The buzz this approach creates is great, but there is also a lot to be said for having control over all these tools and all the data they generate.

Fred Thompson disclosure.

This morning, Steve pointed to me to the new beta version of the CNN.com website, which is now available for public testing. You can view it here and take a guided tour of the new site here. Following are a few things that jumped out at me: (more…)

Throughout the Personal Democracy Forum a lot of smart people were making impassioned pleas for candidates to use technology to have an open dialogue with the American people. Be real. Be authentic. Tear down the walls that have been erected between the candidates and voters.

It all sounds great. But it seems to me there is a tension between this idealized goal of how things should be and how the social web is actually being used.

In many ways, the story of the web (particularly video) in politics the last few years has been the story of “gotcha” moments. Bad jokes. Pretty hair. Southern accents. Screaming. Terror taxis. Macaca. No strings. The humiliating videos get a lot more play than the substitutive ones (admittedly nobody has done anything that interesting with video this cycle).

Some of the moments linked to above are unforgivable. But in some cases these “gotcha” moments are examples of candidates being real.

So we’re in a situation where we want candidates to be authentic but are quick to punish them when they are. And the constant presence of voters with cameras ensures that there will be plenty of these gotcha moments.

It seems to me that instead of creating a more open election, we may be creating one where the candidate that is the most on message and the most robotic is rewarded. It can be argued that it wasn’t YouTube that defeated George Allen, but his own lack of discipline on the stump. The candidate that makes the least mistakes wins.

What do you think? Do you think candidates will use the web to raise the dialogue or are we just going to see an endless series of “gotcha” moments? Is the social web going to be used this cycle to build candidates up or simply to tear them down?

Update: John Stodder offers his take on Kos’ “gotcha” strategy for 2008.

When I was in traditional PR one of the activities I always thought was a waste of time and money was the creation of internal, morale boosting videos.  Basically, the idea is to make this “cool” video to get everyone fired up at some big event, nevermind the other 364 days in the year.  It almost impossible to make one of these that doesn’t make people cringe.

Thanks to YouTube, these types of videos are showing up on the Internet.  Below are three that represent the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the team building video genre.

The Good

This internal Kodak video is brilliant. It beautifully describes the company’s transition to digital. I got a little fired up watching it.

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I’ve been saving interesting political videos in my YouTube account in preparation for a cheap “list” post.  I’m pulling the trigger today.  So here are the six most interesting political videos I’ve come accross in the first part of this year.

(6) John McCain sings “bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran”..

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Following up to my previous post about online campaigning , there was a panel at last week’s Politics Online Conference that discussed the broader topic of how Web 2.0 is changing the media. What the panel ended up talking about would have been more fitting under the title of how Web 2.0 is changing campaigns and campaign coverage… but that really doesn’t matter – it’s still great topic with lots of room for what seemed to be everyone’s favorite subject at the conference: Macaca. Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine , PrezVid ) moderating, and participants Jay Rosen (PressThink.org , AssignmentZero.com ), Jim Brady (Executive Editor, WashingtonPost.com ), and David Plotz (Deputy Editor, Slate ). Here are my (once again completely personally biased) highlights and thoughts:

• All candidates are going to have a Macaca moment.
  Understandably, Macaca was a big buzz word around the conference. The consensus of the panel was that campaigns are much more exposed in this election cycle that they ever were before and that all of the candidates will inevitably have at least one Macaca moment.
  My thoughts: Agree.

• Macaca-stalking.
  Jay Rosen suggested that Gawker / paparazzi-type coverage of candidate slipups is the new order of this cycle and that there will be at least one person covering every move and word a candidate says this time around. They’ll all be in a position when they think they’re off the record speaking to one person while another is quietly taping the moment for us all to enjoy.
  My thoughts: I love it.

• Candidates’ reaction to possible Macaca moments.
  There was disagreement on how candidates will react to the possibility of Macaca moments: Rosen suggested that candidates will have no choice but to embrace this and be more “authentic” or at least put on more authentic “performances”. Jim Brady suggested the opposite would happen and that campaigns will end up being more scripted and less spontaneous as a result. Everyone laughed when he suggested that these “conversations” are going to prove to be more like a job interview than an authentic conversation.
  My thoughts: I think they’re both right and we’ll see two types of candidate emerge. Which style will prevail? Probably both.
   
  
• Will Macaca moments lose importance over time?
  All panelists seemed to agree that the voting public will get more and more used to Macaca moments over time and that their political effect on a candidate will subsequently diminish, that people will ultimately be more forgiving of a candidate’s Macacaesque slip-ups.
  My thoughts: I disagree - shocking off-the-record statements by a candidate will never cease to have political consequences.
   
• Negative tactics will increase due to web anonymity.
  Jim Brady – YouTube anonymity allows for posting of anonymous videos to slamming or praising a candidate.
  My thoughts: Campaigns can now go incognito and create anonymous praise and attack ads. The anonymous public can too. The 1984 Hillary Clinton video is was a good example of that.
   
• Conversations will become more personal.
  Jay Rosen suggested that candidates will begin to speak more about how they personally feel about issues. He used the example of JetBlue’s CEO apology about the winter plane problems they had. He insisted on how much the mistakes devastated him personally, and the whole thing worked for them – because it seemed like a genuine apology.
  My thoughts: Al Gore coming out of his political-consultant prefab shell is another example of genuineness being the new measure of success (and lenience).

Arianna Huffington has a blog post up exposing the maker of the now famous “Vote Different“ Hillary Clinton attack ad as Philip de Vellis, an employee at the Democrat web consultancy Blue State Digital.  Background on the situation is available here.

I’d like to personally thank Huffington for breaking this story.  I was suffering from a serious case of parkridge47 overload. 

Here are some others on the story:

• I Made the “Vote Different” Ad - Philip de Vellis
• My Thoughts, Before This Gets Out of Hand - The Beta Stage
• What de Vellis? Obama Consulting Firm Employee Made The Act - Hotline On Call
• ParkRidge47 Mystery Solved by HuffPost - Tech President
• Creator of Anti-Hillary “1984″ Video Revealed - The WP Fix
• Anonymity Sucks - Tech President
• Surprise! Obama’s web team is ParkRidge47 - David All

Here’s the video for those who haven’t seen it.

Gary Bivings and I attended last week’s Politics Online Conference here in DC. Here are some (completely personally biased) highlights from one of my conference favorite panels. Over the week I’ll be posting other things I thought were interesting from some of the other panels I attended at the conference.

Presence in Second Life by politicians has limited effect within Second Life but gets great mainstream coverage. Jerome Armstrong, founder of the liberal blog MyDD and consultant for Mark Warner’s Forward Together PAC said that Warner’s virtual presence in Second Life was not well received at all by political bloggers, but very well received by non-political bloggers, and also received lots of good mainstream press coverage.
My thoughts: Politicians in Second Life has always seemed gimmicky to me. As the novelty of a politician being in Second Life wears off (and it’s wearing off quickly) so will the resulting mainstream coverage.

Campaigns are having big online-only events. Patrick Ruffini , previous eCampaign director for the RNC and currently an online strategy adviser to Mayor Giuliani, suggested that, unlike previous in campaign cycles, ’08 Campaigns are using the web to make major announcements. By having some big events offline and other big events online, the impact of the online event expands beyond the political blogosphere where a candidate. For example Hillary Clinton can have a big online event and in doing so reach out beyond the political blogosphere where she’s not particularly well received (at the moment).
My thoughts: Great observations – I’ll be watching big online announcements with this perspective from now on.

“Flooding the Zone.” Chuck DeFeo, General Manager of conservative hangout TownHall.com fame and eCampaign Manager for Bush-Cheney ‘04, suggested that politicians need to react quickly to bad press, even if it’s in the form of unfavorable YouTube videos. After the Allen Macaca incident, someone searching YouTube for “Macaca” should have found lots of pro-Allen stuff instead of just the Macaca video. DeFeo calls overtaking the negative message with a positive message “Flooding the zone”.
My thoughts: Love the term – campaigns can and should prepare for the worst to happen in new media because when it takes off it will take off virally and like a rocket. Incidentally, everyone at the conference was talking about Macaca and future Macaca moments, but I’ll have more on that in another post.

YouTube is a massive video focus group. Chuck DeFeo suggests that with YouTube campaigns have a huge focus group to help them find out “what’s going to pop and what’s not.”
My thoughts: Chuck is right and campaigns will begin to use YouTube to “test the waters” routinely.

Leverage supporters to be experimental for a campaign. While the general consensus was that politics on the web is not just about raising money and that web campaigns need freedom from the top in order to succeed, Chuck DeFeo noted that “Campaigns are not good R&D environments”. Joe Trippi , Howard Dean’s campaign guru in ’04, agreed but suggested instead that, “Campaigns need to provide tools for supporters to be experimental.”
My thoughts: Trippi is right and campaigns can be good R&D environments if it isn’t the campaign itself doing the R&D but rather the supporters – organize and leverage campaign supporters properly and give them the tools they need to make the experimentation happen. While campaigns are by nature super-cautious, I think things will end up going in this direction sooner or later, but maybe not in a big way in this cycle.

Prediction: the end of big money? Joe Trippi, credited with helping Dean raise more money than any other Democratic presidential campaign in history, thinks that online fundraising is going to take over altogether. “One of the candidates will hit a home run with fundraising in a big way and take over big money and PAC’s.” One message in one debate that appeals to a large grassroots contingency “can totally trip over and change politics.” He thinks it will happen in this cycle.
My thoughts: Either way, we’re definitely in for a great online ride in this campaign cycle.

Viacom Inc. reported this morning that it is suing Google and YouTube for $1 billion (via the Washington Post, BBC News, the Blogging Times).

Honestly, the only thing that surprises me about this is that it didn't happen sooner. 

Apparently, Viacom, which owns brands including MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodeon, CMT, SpikeTV, Paramount and Dreamworks, believes that "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times."

Viacom is accusing Google and YouTube of massive copyright infringement. Go figure. 

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One trend to watch this year is the boom in well produced, niche video blogs.  The children of Rocketboom. 

My favorite example is Wallstrip, a daily video blog that takes an in depth look at a hot stock each day from a sort of layman’s perspective.  Using humor, they try to explain in real world terms why a stock is doing so well.

I think it is terrific.

To give you a taste, following is a recent show in which a bunch of venture capitalists race to see who is the most proficient on a Blackberry.  Most of the shows are a bit more informational than this one, but it gives you a taste of Wallstrip’s tone. 

On a side note, I think it is just a matter of time before someone does this for the political scene in DC. I’m looking forward to it and I hope it is as good as Wallstrip.