The Web Pitch

With just under 24 hours to go till the American Presidential Campaign, I thought it apt to review how Barack Obama’s campaign has been using social media technologies to raise funds and to engage with younger voters.

Obama has taken grassroots campaigning into the digital age by embracing Web 2.0 and using it as a central platform of his presidential campaign. From YouTube to social networking, Obama has navigated Web 2.0 and turned it into a major force within his campaign.

Obama and Social Media

The first rule of social media marketing is to put yourself “out there”. This can be achieved by becoming an active blogger, establishing a presence on the major social networks, and embracing new forms of communication. Obama has done just that. From social networking to his blog to his Fight the Smears campaign, Obama has made his Web 2.0 presence known. Obama is using a number of tools including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter

At the time of writing, Jeremiah Owyang compares Obama’s social media presence with that of John McCain. The statistics make interesting reading.

Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

This personal activity in social networks allows Obama to quickly get the word out across multiple platforms.

It’s clear that Obama is dominating the social media activity, this could because of two reasons: 1) Obama campaign moved quicker to social networking and social media, McCain only recently launched his own social network with KickApps. 2) The Social Technographics (behaviours to adopt social media) skew heavier towards demographics, yet these percentages are far greater than the margins shown in technographics.

Obama and YouTube

Barack Obama has done an amazing job of making sure his speeches sound as good on YouTube as they do on the evening news. Obama’s campaign has also gambled on YouTube’s audience by creating a strong presence on the website. Historically, younger voters have been high on enthusiasm but low on voter turnout. But Obama has been able to utilise the power of social media to challenge that trend.

The popularity of YouTube gives a global audience access to the entire speech, not just a brief segment chosen by the news editors. This allows the full power of the entire speech to resonate with the audience.

Obama and Social Networking

Obama’s social networking success can be attributed to Chris Hughes. Hughes, was one of the founders of Facebook and with Mark Zuckerberg. Hughes has the knowledge and the experience of building social networks and may prove to be a major factor in Obama’s Presidential success.

Obama is not the first to politician to use social networking. Presidential contender, Howard Dean used Meetup.com to become a serious contender for his party’s nomination in 2004. However, Obama also decided to build his own social network. which was simple to use, rally supporters and proved vital in fundraising. The jewel in the crown is My.BarackObama.Com

As a fully fledged social network, My.BarackObama allows users to create their own profiles, friend lists and the ability to write their own personal blog. They can also join groups, participate in fund raising, and arrange events all from an interface that is both easy to use and familiar to any Facebook or MySpace user.

FightTheSmears.com is Obama’s initiative to address the many rumours that circulate the internet about him.

Here’s an example:

If Obama continued to let these rumours spread and grow, they would become facts in the eyes of the voting public. By hosting the conversation, the campaign can respond to rumours on individual blogs and forums.

 Obama and the iPhone

Obama’s campaign also released a free application for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. The application allows the user to organise contacts by key battleground states, and measures statistics to see how the user is doing compared to other leading callers.

The application provides information about the campaign via text messages and e-mail, offers coverage of national and local campaign news. The application also helps the user to find local events, share information by e-mail, view campaign videos and pictures.

Win or lose, there is absolutely no doubt that Barack Obama has changed the face of politics in America today. Now it’s up to the voters to decide if he will win the election.

Obama on the Web

• My Barack Obama
• Fight the Smears
• Obama on Twitter
• Obama on Facebook
• Obama on MySpace
• Obama on YouTube

[BONUS]

12 Viral Videos from the 2008 Campaign

Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin brought a firm focus back to reality.  At recent conferences, the mood has been dampened by current economic conditions. Funding for web start-ups is vanishing rapidly for businesses without sustainable business plans. However, responding to critics suggesting that the Web 2.0 bubble was bursting. O’Reilly asked the rhetorical question, "Do you really think that we’re done yet with exploiting this huge change [of disruptive technologies]?"

O’Reilly suggested that the ‘web winners’ in the years ahead are those businesses that are involved in:

• Cloud computing
• Software as a Service applications like Google Apps
• Open Source software
• Companies delivering value added services to consumers or businesses
• Breakthroughs in collective intelligence (harnessing the crowd)
• Entrepreneurs who innovate and concentrate on delivering value

Using the example of the PC industry in the early 1990’s. O’Reilly cited the early years when there were hundreds of PC manufactures. However, through a ‘natural consolidation’ process, the number today is greatly reduced.  He then made the conclusion that the current economic problems accelerate the consolidation process – The business with robust business models will survive. Those that do not will die.

O’Reilly advocated the use of building business that deliver value, concluding with the strategy:

"Work on stuff that matters"

Citing the example of the Berlin Airlift and the innovative efforts required to achieve it, he stressed that his point that:

"Great challenge = Great opportunity"

O’Reilly finished the keynote, urging the masses to use Web  2.0 innovations to address today’s important problems. The world doesn’t need another another “Me too”  application. However, web applications that deliver “real value” are the ones to lead the industry out of the doldrums.

Keynote Video and presentation slides follow below

Hat Tip http://media.vascellari.com

Interview with Tim O’Reilly at Web 2.0 Expo 2008 Berlin from DigiRedo on Vimeo.

Confirmed. I will be attending the FOWA conference again in a few weeks time.  This year’s speaker list looks impressive as ever. I’m particularly looking forward to Jeff Barr’s talk on Amazon Web Services and talks from Jason Calacanis from Mahalo.com and Blaine Cook, formerly of Twitter.  Of course, it will be great to watch the live filming of Diggnation once again!

• You can expect live Twitter coverage, so don’t forget to follow me.
• Photos, videos and blog posts from the both of the two days
• I’m going to be armed with my Flip Video camera, so expect the odd impromptu interview.

If you are planning to attend FOWA, leave a quick comment to arrange a meet up?

What, you haven’t signed up yet?  Click on the banner ad above.

* Special thanks to Jo and Natasha at Carsonified *

Punch Above Your Weight is a 1 day workshop designed to help you beef up your Internet presence to make you look bigger and more impressive.

Presented by the Punch Above Team, who have interviewed over 20 small businesses who are have successfully used Web 2.0 technologies to raise their online presence. The workshop combines their insights with the team’s own experience of online marketing.

The next workshop will be held on 11th July at the Hub, 5 Wormwood St, London and at the Hurtwood Inn, Peaslake near Guildford on 31st July.

There’s a theoretical session in the morning and a hands on session in the afternoon. The price for both sessions is £135 + VAT- book here

The workshop is presented by howtodobusiness.com in association with the Business School at Brunel

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I’ve been following Gary Vaynerchuk’s blog for some time. Gary’s enthusiasm for Social Media and meeting new people is amazing.

Gary’s business is wine and he has successfully added elements of Web 2.0 to spread the message of his Winelibrary.tv blog.

In the video above, Gary asks (25 seconds in),  When do you know when you have a community?

This is an interesting question. Many people who are embracing social media today are obsessed with raw numbers, in others words:

Who is following me on  Facebook?          How many Twitter followers do I have?        How many people are subscribed to my RSS feed?    

My concern here is that in the rush to build a community of people around your brand. The content of your message could be lost. In other words, don’t lose sight of your message, the numbers following you will take care of themselves. Concentrate on engaging your audience and NEVER take them for granted.

In answer to Gary’s question, you have a community when ONE person listens to you. Gary’s top tips include:

1. Embrace your community BIG or SMALL
2. Stop worrying about stats and numbers
3. Stop taking for granted that you already have a community, it starts at 1!

A wee bit late, but then I have no broadband access at home at the moment,  eek.

Fuel, is a new brand of conference from the Carsonified team. The conference is aimed at entrepreneurs and marketers who want to learn about and use social media tools. The speakers were varied and represented a good spectrum of start-ups, corporate business and those heavily involved within the social media space.

Highlight presentations for me were from:

1. Alex Hunter, head of Virgin’s online properties. Alex discussed how Virgin America launched an airline, embraced the power of social media tools and a community.  A great case study on how Virgin launched a company WITHOUT the help of Branson.
2. Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt – Discussing her forthcoming book, “The Whuffie Factor” (See slides below)
3. Ted Hunt from Innocent Drinks discussing how Innocent capitalised on their “inner voice” and used Social Media to build their online brand.  Innocent manage to brilliantly inject personality into their brand.

Overall, a great conference with some brilliant demos of Microsoft DeepZoom and Photosynth

| View | Upload your own

Power quotes:

“…we are serious about being honest with you. Be real, talk about the good the bad and the ugly”

“Communication out, is over…. Communicate is in…"

"If you afraid of being personal, you are dead!"

Ryan Carson - Carsonified 

“Learn to harness the Ripple effect of social media

Alex Hunter – Virgin

I will post further links to presentations and conference audio as soon as they are available

Take a look at the Virgin Eye, as mentioned by Alex Hunter at Fuel. The Virgin Eye scans the Internet looking for news, pictures and stories from the Virgin Empire. 

The Virgin Group are taking Social Media technologies VERY seriously.

Very cool.

Tomorrow, I will be attending Carsonified’s Fuel conference at RIBA. Expect lots of Twitter updates  (Follow Me).  Post conference reactions and write up will follow here soon!

I’m particularly looking forward to hearing Tara Hunt’s and Ted Hunt’s (no relation, I think?) talks.

Conference Schedule

Speakers

I came across Twistori tonight. The site is a "first person" visualization of Twitter messages, inspired by We Feel Fine. Twitter messages are filtered by occurrences of the phrases "I love", "I hate", "I think", "I believe", "I feel" & "I wish", which are placed in a visual scrolling message ticker, similar to Digg Labs BigSpy.

The site is a great aggregator for human emotions on Twitter.

Very Cool.

Also check out  http://wwdc.twistori.com for WWDC tweet coverage.

The inside jacket of the book states:

“Web 2.0 is not about mass marketing. It’s about actually understanding the masses. And it’s not about controlling the message. It’s about engaging the audience and actually hearing what they have to say. It’s about enabling creativity, realizing a culture of contribution, and putting the user in control”.

Web 2.0 Heroes by Bradley Jones presents a series of edited interviews from a number of leading figures from within the Web 2.0 sphere (See below).  In most cases the interviewee is a person closely related to the company’s web strategy. The book builds on the Web 2.0 theme and asks. “What’s is coming next?”. A few of the interviewees discuss their thoughts on the Semantic Web and reflect on developing areas such as  Software plus Services (S+S).

Overall, the book presents a good perspective and is just over 250 pages.  I did enjoy the large number of quotes which are highlighted throughout the book. However, I would have liked to have seen some insights from the author, adding to the commentary of the interviewees. Bradley’s voice is somewhat missing! Nevertheless, an interesting read for anyone with an interest in the Web 2.0 sphere.

The Web 2.0 heroes include:

· Max Mancini - eBay

· Alan Meckler - Internet.com

· Eric Engleman - Bloglines

· Gina Bianchini - Ning

· Dorion Carroll - Technorati

· Raju Vegesna - Zoho

· Richard MacManus - Read/Write Web & Web 2.0 WorkGroup

· TJ Kang - ThinkFree

· Patrick Crane - LinkedIn

· Shaun Walker - DotNetNuke

· Biz Stone - Twitter

· Seth Steinberg - Meebo

· Joshua Schachter - Del.icio.us

· Ranjith Kumaran - YouSendIt

· Garrett Camp - StumbleUpon

· Rodrigo Madanes - Skype

· Rod Smith - IBM Corporation

· Tim Harris - Microsoft Corporation

· Bob Brewin & Tim Bray - Sun Microsystems

· Michele Turner - Adobe Corporation