Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

Barack Obama's "Story of Us," Told Through a Computer Screen

BY Nick Judd | Friday, February 10 2012

To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the day Barack Obama first announced his candidacy for presidency of the United States, his campaign has released this video, which has some stylistic similarities to Google's unfailingly optimistic ad spots in the same way many videos in this election season so far have resembled action movie trailers. Read More

Postcards for Obama

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, January 24 2012

The Obama campaign has released a new app that lets supporters sign their friends up for physical mail from the president's re-election effort. Politico's Byron Tau spotted it first.

This is the latest use of the web to revamp what is in reality a years-old campaign practice. Postcards from friends on a campaign's behalf have been a tool in the toolkit for years, and there are riffs on this idea that involve even more high tech.

Read More

Inside Mitt Romney's Digital Mind

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, January 19 2012

From the rise of voters who can only be reached online to increased use of mobile devices and social media, Zac Moffatt recently spoke to Atlantic correspondent Nancy Scola about what it's like running digital for the campaign that now seems poised to confront Barack Obama for the presidency. Read More

Obama Occupies the Union-Leader

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, January 10 2012

Barack Obama's re-election campaign has bought several ad spots on the homepage of the New Hampshire Union-Leader's website today, just as it did on the day of the Iowa caucus. Read More

Obama for America is Still Hiring Geeks

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, January 5 2012

Obama for America is hiring a senior development operations engineer, the kind of person who will "design robust, scalable systems for our web applications" and "support the campaign’s efforts to inform voters, organize supporters and raise money." Among the requirements: Must love Linux. Read More

Buddy Roemer's Online Gamble

BY Nick Judd and Raphael Majma | Thursday, January 5 2012

Little-known Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer is banking on a digital presence to stay relevant. He's using most of his budget on digital ads, and asks Twitter users to "donate" their accounts to his campaign. Mashable quotes 140elect's Zach Green as saying that 121 people donated their accounts, reaching 62,664 followers. To gear up for the upcoming primary, the Roemer team has bought a week's worth of Facebook ads in New Hampshire, Mashable reports. Read More

What "Targeted Internet Advertising" Looks Like

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, January 3 2012

The Obama campaign has purchased ad space that occupies the entire background of the Des Moines Register's homepage today, the day of the Iowa caucuses. Read More

Mitt Romney's preroll ad on a Bloomberg clip playing on YouTube in Iowa

From YouTube to Facebook, New Digital Targeting Helps Romney Campaign Reach Voters

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, December 22 2011

Mitt Romney's campaign team has carefully planned a digital ad blitz over the year as it hunts for voters in every virtual nook and cranny in the emerging post-live television world, and is now blanketing Iowa in targeted online ads that use just about every new trick in the Internet marketing playbook. Read More

Spotting Obama's Alpha Geeks

BY Nick Judd | Monday, December 12 2011

In a brief for GQ, Reid Cherlin — once a White House spokesman — spots the programmers working on President Barack Obama's re-election effort. Click through for the vignette from his former boss' campaign headquarters; Cherlin will be covering New Hampshire 2012 for the magazine. Read More

Do Sen. McCain's Tweets Hint at a Future Presidential Endorsement?

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, December 8 2011

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has said that he isn't going to endorse any Republican presidential candidate any time soon, but he may have blown his cover with a recent series of tweets. Though the Arizona senator was ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed wednesday >

Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

GO

yesterday >

CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

GO

Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

GO

House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

GO

Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

More