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Is Rick Perry Gay? Googlers Want to Know

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, August 12 2011

The top search phrase for the query "Is Rick Perry..." is "Is Rick Perry Gay," Google Suggest tells us. It's fun to see how that question matches up against queries about Mitt Romney, courtesy of Web Seer: Read More

Barack Obama Gains 37,000+ Followers Since Friday's #Compromise Dip; Big Whoop

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, August 1 2011

It was big "news" on Friday in social media circles: "Obama Loses 36,000+ Followers in #Compromise Campaign," Mashable headlined it. Read More

A New Project to Score Politicians With Klout

BY Becky Kazansky | Thursday, July 28 2011

This week, Timothy Hathaway – CEO of political technology firm Activist Manager – pointed me to his company's nascent project to comprehensively track Klout scores for advocacy groups, senators, presidential ... Read More

The Republican Master of Offbeat Viral Video Strikes Again for Huntsman

BY Nick Judd | Friday, July 22 2011

ClickZ's Kate Kaye talks with Jon Huntsman's media consultant, Fred Davis, about the short — and, frankly, odd — web videos that are the centerpiece of Huntsman's web presence: "Jon just talks in the videos ... Read More

Who's Talking About the Presidential Candidates On Twitter? And Why Should We Care?

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, July 19 2011

It's not hard to find people tracking what you might call the Twitter horse race: Which presidential candidate has the most followers, who gained the most followers recently, who racked up a lot of retweets. But what ... Read More

Facebook and NBC To Co-Host a Republican Primary Debate

BY Nick Judd | Monday, July 18 2011

NBC News and Facebook will co-host a Republican presidential debate in advance of the New Hampshire Republican primary in 2012, Meet the Press moderator David Gregory announced in a video on the Meet the Press Facebook ... Read More

Biden's Facebook Page Gets an Obama 2012 Makeover

BY Andrew Seo | Friday, July 15 2011

Vice President Joe Biden's Facebook page was updated today as the Obama 2012 campaign looks to keep fans in the loop on the team's re-election efforts. In addition to a new profile picture, the refreshed page has added ... Read More

Huntsman is In

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, June 21 2011

At an event held at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ, and that was streamed live on his still sparse website, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman officially announced he was joining the field of Republican presidential ... Read More

Jon Huntsman Spins Up Online Operation

BY Nick Judd | Monday, June 20 2011

With cryptic teaser videos and a web presence that says next to nothing about his presidential bid as of earlier this morning, Jon Huntsman's campaign kickoff is so far looking more like a marketing campaign for a ... Read More

Obama Campaign Now Recruiting 'Analysts and Data Geniuses,' Among Others

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, June 15 2011

President Barack Obama's re-election campaign recently sent an email to selected people on its lists, seeking paid staffers to bolster its new media and web development operations. From the email, signed by Obama's chief ... Read More

News Briefs

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Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

On Threshold of Telecom Revolution, Future of Internet Freedom in Burma Uncertain

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

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Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

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thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

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wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

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PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

tuesday >

Website Imitation is Flattery in New York City Council Race

A New York City Council candidate who had made his name as a technology consultant and spearheaded an open government initiative several years ago found parts of his website copied by another City Council candidate in a different borough, as Politicker first reported. GO

Mike Honda Locks Up Establishment Support, But Challenger Has Ear of the Silicon Valley Elite

Some of Silicon Valley's most influential business people will hold a fundraiser in San Francisco this Thursday for Ro Khanna, the 36-year-old lawyer who's challenging 71-year-old California Democrat Mike Honda for his 17th Congressional District seat. The names at the top of the invite: Ron Conway and Sean Parker. They're apparently forming a committee to help Khanna build his campaign. The other bold-face names who are listed as part of the 'committee in formation' include Salesforce.com's Founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Benchmark Capital General Partners' Matt Cohler and Peter Fenton, tech entrepreneur Shawn Fanning, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, her big data venture investor husband Zach Bogue, and Conway's SV Angel colleague, Founder and Managing Partner David Lee. GO

Tools to Keep Independent Media Online in Hostile Environments

Websites and media outlets in developing countries or countries with corrupt or repressive regimes struggle daily to fend off hacker attacks, some from their own government — like the Malaysian news portal Sarawak Report, which techPresident reported was taken down in April by sustained denial-of-service attacks. The negative attention controversial reporting draws can scare local advertisers away as well, making it difficult for a media company to support itself. Media Frontiers offers two services to websites dealing with either of those problems.

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monday >

Ahead of September Elections, German Pirate Party Picks Its Platform

The German Pirate Party held its election year convention over the weekend and approved its party platform, following lengthy debate over the role that online decision-making should have within the party, as German news sources reported and the party outlined on its own web platforms. GO

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