Marc Ross, Christine Stineman, and Chris Lisi of 2ndSix, Tribe Effect and Chris Lisi Communications have just published a very interesting report looking at how 102 big Washington-based trade associations and advocacy groups are--or aren't--making use of an array of 14 core social media tools and platforms. The results shouldn't surprise anyone; it's still pretty obvious that a year after Barack Obama's electoral victory, most inside-the-Beltway still have a very cautious and traditional attitude towards social media.

But the individual breakdown by organization and the thoroughness of the research (which covers a ten week span ending October 2, 2009) ought to serve as a wake-up call for many groups. Because the results are pathetic: "75 of the organizations reviewed [are using] four or fewer online new media tools. The average score of the organizations reviewed was 24%, meaning 76% of the most commonly used social media tools are not being utilized to communicate with members, voters and other constituencies."

The American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation's brand-new experiment in applying Digg-like principles to health care reform is interesting because of where the organization fits into the Washington universe. We all remember applications like Obama CTO, which attempted to set the agenda for the White House's chief technology from the outside. By contrast, this group -- newly headed by former Washington state congressional candidate and netroots favorite Darcy Burner and is staffed by Lorelei Kelly, who has long worked with Congress -- serves as the extra-congressional wing of the official Congressional Progressive Caucus. CPC isn't exactly known as a beehive of activity, but it has a healthy framework. And Burner et al's experiments in community-sourced thinking might inject a little liveliness into the institutional body.

• There's a fuss being made about President Barack Obama's refusal to allow a video from House Minority Leader John Boehner to stand as a response to the President's first video address while in office...
• After the new WhiteHouse.gov launched, a section marked "Pool Reports" generated words of approval about a more open and transparent White House press experience. It could have been a true game changer. But...
• In a press briefing yesterday, press secretary Robert Gibbs said simply "our email system is not working so well"...
• And even more.

All politics is social: that's the claim of online startup PopRule.com, a new people-powered politics site set to launch as Barack Obama takes the oath of office tomorrow. Call it a politics-saturated Digg or a crowd-sourced Memeorandum but here's a big difference (I've been playing with the beta version over the last week or so) - PopRule puts a big emphasis on local stories, with baked-in regional differentiation in 56 categories.

And according to the founders, PopRule also aims to be "multi-partisan," working to avoid the echo chamber that occasionally drives other aggregators.

Jose Antonio Vargas has been covering the intersection of politics and technology for the Washington Post since February of last year, and he's got a pre-New Year's wrap up of what he's learned along the way...Some of the digs against Digg, the community-ranking site, is that it's biased against women and weighted in favor of liberals. On the latter, enter #diggcons...MoveOn's Eli Pariser is out with a nice Washington Post op-ed laying out the case for why a President Barack Obama will need to tap into the wisdom and passions of the electorate if he's truly going to make transformational change on health care, the Iraq war, and energy policy -- the issues at the top of both his and the American people's agendas...and more.

The pushback against Sarah Palin's dig at community organizers seems to have legs; we look at how one email went from Wasilla, Alaska, out to the world at breathtaking speed; some conservatives find themselves having a tough time making the most of Digg; post-convention online buzz favors Obama over McCain, Palin over Biden; and a great deal more.

Day 4 of our DNC Coverage

DNC Day 2 Edition

#1 Digg video is anti-McCain voter-generated content; Facebook (anti-)campaigns for Vice President; C-SPAN gets searchable, linkable, AND embeddable; Convention website showdown; NYTimes Op-Ed on the power of text messaging; McCain's tech policy (lack thereof); Organizing tips for #dontGo

Round ups of the conservative blogosphere make it clear that the GOP contest is wide open; Ron Paul supporters may be getting the shaft on Digg and PayPal; Ars Technica decides the New Hampshire vote controversy isn't a big deal; Google announces Checkout for Political Contributions; and John Edwards' ad contest yields pretty creative entries.