The Web on the Candidates

TechPresident blogger David All has started a new blog, TechRepublican.com (nice name David!) that wants to get the Republican establishment to embrace Web 2.0 strategies. "While the Internet has grown rapidly, the Party apparatus and its top officials are operating in a disconnected, Web 0.5 world. The result is that our message is failing to penetrate the modern world where millions of independent voters and modern Republicans spend a majority of their time," All writes. All and friends want to galvanize "Gen Nexters" (ooh, that term hurts) to "think, discuss, read, collaborate, criticize, share, and act to make a difference" in the Republican Party, and to usher the party into the 21st century. It's big project that will benefit from David's bottomless well of energy. We wish him luck. Also check out DomeNation, a weekly show on YouTube with David and Jerome Armstrong which will focus on politics and technology.

Following up on his analysis of who's buying Google text ads for Democratic candidates, Steve Patterson of the Bivings Report takes a look at who's buying ads for the Republicans. In addition to gear from Zazzle.com, several of the candidates are buying ads under others' names. For example, Rudy Giuliani is buying ads for searches for himself, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain, and only Giuliani and McCain are taking out ads against their own sites.

At last week's New Organizing Institute/IPDI-sponsored Google presentation on advocacy tools, after looking at Google Ads and answering questions about click fraud, the company's Elections and Issue Advocacy team touched on a new tool whose potential political significance jumped out at me. More than a year ago, Google snapped up a company that was developing an online interface for buying radio advertising, and despite some skepticism about its usefulness, the product looks to be moving out of beta fairly soon.

You can get a good overview of how the ordering system will work here; note that you can specify stations by location and genre, set your own budget, choose your time of day to run ads and get some reporting after-the-fact. You upload your own ads as mp3s, though the site will help you find a company to build them if necessary. Groovy! Basically, you can run ads across the country from a single interface — you won't need to work with different ad reps for individual stations or chains of stations. With 1600 AM and FM stations in the network, and the top 10 stations in 24 of the 25 biggest media markets in the country, Google claims the potential to reach essentially 100% of the U.S. population.

There's a playful drive
afoot to draft law professor, free-culture guru, and PowerPoint maestro
Larry Lessig to run in the April 8 special election for the open seat in California's
12th congressional district. Thing is, "Congressman Lessig"
might not be as far-fetched as it first seems.

Larry Lessig is tying a possible congressional run to the question of
whether or not launching a campaign and/or actually serving as a
member of Congress is the best way to advance a national "grassroots"
Change Congress movement. It's a provocative question, and it's exciting to watch the Stanford prof and free culture guru go
through the process of answering it.

As the Democratic online fundraising hub ActBlue passes the $50 mark, some on the right resist going grassroots to raise cash; what does it mean to run as a computer "illiterate" candidate in a networked world?; just because we're talking to Congress doesn't mean they're listening; the debate continues over the necessary of announcing "I'm committing an act of journalism!"; the Obama camp sets up an "Internet war room;" and more.

Here's a tale of two radically different uses of technology on Capitol Hill: the first to keep all but the most-connected people out, and the second to let the rest of us in. In the first case, we have Members of Congress who are crack-berry addicts staying in permanent contact with their cronies and donors, even on the floor where lobbyists are supposedly banned. And in the second case, we have a Republican Congressman who is Twittering from what he calls the "deepest and darkest hole" in Congress.

Further proof that what happens in twitter doesn't necessarily stay in twitter is the continuing controversy (?!) over the use of new technology by Congresspeople.

Now that FISA has been put to rest, what happens to the group that quickly formed to protest Obama's stance on the bill?; the Twitter Dome Scandal (we coined that!) heats up, and we break it all down for you; a new map tracks where in the world our presidential candidates are; and much, much more.

Twitter in a teacup is officially downgraded from a kerfuffle to a mere brouhaha. Still, there are lessons to learn about how to communicate with Congress and who owns the infrastructure we use.