First POST: Net Effects
BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, March 27 2015
Ballooning digital campaign teams; early registration deadlines kept millions of people from voting in 2012; love letters to Obamacare; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Challenges
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, February 24 2015
How Silicon Valley donors are thinking about Hillary Clinton 2016; Yahoo's security chief locks horns with the head of the NSA; Instagram location data catches a Congressman with his hand in the till; and much, much more. Read More
[Op-Ed] Your In-Box is Personal, and That's What Makes Email Powerful
BY Martha Patzer | Wednesday, December 3 2014
Joe Rospars recently wrote in Time about the perceived “creative crisis" in the Democratic Party, a debate about online fundraising, and the responsibility writers, digital directors, and even candidates have to the creative direction of a campaign. Joe's answer -- “Don’t be lame” -- is a great place to start. But it doesn’t answer the why: Unlike those TV ads, email is personal. Read More
First POST: Downplaying
BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, November 6 2014
Debating what happened to the Democrats' vaunted tech-powered turnout machine in 2014; how Healthcare.gov hurt Democratic incumbents; understanding the participatory engine that is Wikipedia; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Nudges
BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, November 3 2014
How campaign tech has evolved in 2014; Joe Rospars on the Democratic party email crisis; how Facebook, ABC News and BuzzFeed are going to data-mine politics heading into 2016; and much, much more. Read More
First POST: Differentiation
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, August 6 2014
A second national security leaker surfaces; Russian criminals amass a horde of passwords and email addresses; President Obama contradicts his FCC chair on net neutrality; Snoop Lion and the New York Times editorial board have an online party; and much, much more. Read More
The Day Obama's Facebook Page Went Down, and Other Campaign Security Lessons From 2012
BY Sonia Roubini | Tuesday, August 5 2014
In Fall 2011, during the Obama 2012 campaign, the Barack Obama Facebook page with 34 million "likes" disappeared. Visitors to Facebook.com/BarackObama were automatically directed back to the Facebook homepage, and online searches for the page came up blank. Recalling the incident, Laura Olin, the campaign’s social media manager recently told techPresident that before it happened, she had considered “the possibility of someone hacking accounts and posting inappropriate things, but not the page disappearing altogether." She added, "Facebook said that the problem was internal, but it wasn't clear if someone had disappeared the page intentionally or if it had been a mistake.” As we head into the heat of the 2014 midterm elections, and with 2016’s national campaigns beginning to coalesce, the problem of cyber-security for online political campaigns is just simmering beneath the surface. As is the question of how the press will cover the issue. There are real threats out there, and also plenty of room for confusion. Read More
First POST: Post-Ambition and Fear Not
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, February 25 2014
Cyberwar in Syria?; the Obama 2012 tech tools are being shared with lower ballot candidates; the debate over Netflix and Comcast continues; and much, much more. Read More
With Shades of Obama's 2012 Campaign, Internet Politics Appears in German Elections
BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, April 2 2013
The whole world watched the 2012 presidential elections in the United States and saw a wired campaign where the web was both tool and topic, a means to political ends and a subject of politics in itself. As Germany prepares to elect a new government, candidates and political parties are taking stances and strategies with shades of the American 2012 campaign, from Obama for America's use of the web to the slow rise of Internet policy as an important campaign issue. Read More
Headed to Startup Land, Obama's Tech Alumni Take the Ground-Game Mentality With Them
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, February 21 2013
With the campaign behind them, Obama for America Technology alumni are scattered across the country — some still in Chicago, some making a new start in a new city, others still taking time off for travel. In interviews, some of these coders, designers, and product managers said that the campaign was a political break in a career otherwise spent in the tech sector. Others told me their time working for Obama has convinced them to focus on civic life. All of them expressed a connection to their campaign colleagues and to OfA's test-everything, data-driven organizing ethos that, they say, is likely to inform everything they do next. Read More