David, first off, I enjoyed your piece in the Politico this morning. I have long been interested in the disparity between the Dems and Reps online.

Interestingly, the Republicans were the first out of the gate in embracing online community with their GOPTeamLeader platform a few years back, but they ultimately gave up on it (they do seem to be dabbling in it again as a link on the RNC site, but it is more focused on transactional asks, as opposed to true community building).

I have a theory why.

In general, I think the internet lends itself better to public interest issues more than it does to private interest issues. Specifically, the broader the impact of a policy, the better the social networking aspects of the internet work for a campaign.

Imagine trying to create a broad grassroots campaign to promote the increased profits of a large corporation. It just won't fly.

That is because the internet is most powerful when it converts email lists of activists into strategic advocacy communities. The power of the internet lies in creating a deeper sense of loyalty to a campaign's goals because the community members have internalized their stakes in the outcome.

This dynamic fits most progressive and social conservative issues, but does not really fit business issues.

Thus, to the extent the top Republican candidates are having difficulties connecting with the social conservatives within their party, it makes sense that their internet strategies, even if they are comparably as good as the Democrats, won't work as well.

Alan Rosenblatt
Executive Director, Internet Advocacy Center
AKA DrDigiPol (drdigipol.com)

Having been the guy to officially 'pull the plug' on Team Leader, I can tell you it was not a matter of 'giving up' on it. It was, in the end, a tragic loss due to my overestimation of how much support I actually had for creating a Republican destination through GOP.com.

The idea was to build a bigger and better program that was more open, more engaging and a true online community - something akin to a cross between RedState and Townhall. The difference would be the connection to a voter file to register, ID and turnout voters, inviting self-mobilization through volunteer activities, and syndication of the system across state party, candidate and activist websites.

We had two problems with the Team Leader program and attempted to address both as part of the rebranding and retooling.

Our first problem was the name. The name of the program actually ended up limiting its success. When you focus group things before you release them, you discover issues like this. As it turned out, a lot of people were afraid of the "Team Leader" title because, while they wanted to be involved, they felt intimidated by the idea of "being in charge" of anything. We actually saw this on the Bush campaign and changed the name from Bush Team Leaders to Bush Volunteers. When we did, our take rate exploded.

The other problem was the disconnect between the Team Leader effort and GOP.com. As in a lot of places, the RNC had different divisions doing different (and often competing) things online. GOP.com had been run out of Communications while GOPTeamLeader was run out of Political. They competed for budget dollars and eyeballs. In redesigning GOP.com after the 2004 elections, we combined all those efforts under one roof. We changed the name to GOP Teams, and the verbiage to being 'a part of the team'.

As I said, a much broader social networking program and more options for true involvement were to be the foundation of the effort. This ultimately ended up being the MyGOP tool - and was a faint shadow of the original idea.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the opposition to open systems that I encountered. The aversion to letting go of the message and allowing individual supporters to grab and run with it proved to great. With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I would not have dismantled a relatively successful if top-heavy system like Team Leader to end up with what exists now.

This is illustrative of a larger problem the GOP has. This is where I part with David on his belief that a party-sponsored web 2.0 infrastructure will bridge the digital divide. I believe that divide is a function of a much deeper distrust of letting the message go. If the GOP is going to be successful online, we cannot wait for the party to do it.

As the Democrats have shown, this will need to be organized by those in the party who get it. We will have to drag the party apparatus, kicking and screaming, to the dance.

Take a look at this: http://projects.cdharrison.com/prez08/

I've compiled a table of all of the candidates and what types of services they are using in addition to their campaign websites. The Democrats are beating the Republicans hands down.

It's been a while since I last updated. I'll try to post an update by week's end if any candidates have added to their online arsenal...

cdharrion - I know it seems rudimentary, but you should also add the category "blog on website."

That's another area where Republicans are completely lacking (save Mitt's Five Guys Five Brothers blog.
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David All
The David All Group
http://davidallgroup.com
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It seems that a healthy combination of what Alan and Michael is taking place here. The very nature of Web 2.0 is openness.

The GOP is usually more organized, more disciplined, more top down. For whatever reason, the powers that be when it comes to implementing a Web 2.0 effort strongly resist letting go of the message. No surprise there. That doesn't mesh with what Web 2.0 is about, so it fails.

And a result of the GOP being in control of the White House and the both Houses of Congress for the majority of the past eight years, has been an insurgent and activist left, reading to move forward regardless of official party structure. The momentum was already their.

I'd also add that two more things. In my discussions with vendors in the internet strategy space, I've found that if they have political leanings, it is more often to the left than right.

And lastly, in 2004, we had several Democratic candidates running, each with internet efforts. OK, they were rudimentary, but they were there. On the GOP side, we had just one, the president. That means that entering 2008, there were that many more campaign vets from the Dem side that now been able to discard those training wheels and move forward. Not so on the GOP side. The depth of experience may have been the same, but there were just more people on the Democratic side that had experience, connections, and understanding of social media.

www.digitalstreetjournal.com