Zac Moffatt | TechPresident

Romney Campaign Digital Director: Online Efforts Enjoyed Success

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, December 12 2012

In a blog post, Zac Moffatt wrote that just because the Romney campaign lost the election doesn't mean its digital efforts were not successful. Read More

For Romney's Digital Campaign, a Second-Place Finish

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, November 7 2012

At every phase of the campaign, Mitt Romney's digital operation was half a step behind the technological savvy of Barack Obama's online team — at several moments, announcing features or ideas hours, days or months after the Obama campaign had already rolled them out. Read More

Mitt Romney's Campaign Takes Tech "Parity" With OfA to a Whole New Level

BY Nick Judd | Monday, September 10 2012

On Aug. 25, Mitt Romney's campaign announced "Victory Wallet," which allows users who opt in to authorize one-click donations to the campaign going forward. As BuzzFeed and Salon also noted, following the klaxon call of progressive digital activists Jessica Morales and Matt Ortega, the Romney campaign was using copy on that page that is identical to the text used by Obama for America for its very same feature. Read More

At Republican National Convention, Romney's Digital Director Hints At New App

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, August 30 2012

On a public Google Hangout Thursday afternoon, Mitt Romney's digital director, Zac Moffatt, announced that the campaign will soon roll out an event app that will handle event ticketing and provide a "social" component by pulling in Twitter and Facebook posts during a several-hour period around events. The upcoming app is not the only thing Team Romney has been up to. Over the weekend, the campaign rolled out "Victory Wallets," an analog to the one-click donations feature Barack Obama's campaign and the software firm Blue State Digital released earlier this year. Read More

It's the Romney Veepstakes, Pushed Straight to Your Phone

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Tuesday, July 31 2012

Mitt Romney's Digital Director Zac Moffatt says that push notifications through smartphone apps are a better way of notifying huge numbers of people about timely events than text messages. Read More

At #PDF12, Zac Moffatt Talks Digital Strategy

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, June 12 2012

Zac Moffatt at Personal Democracy Forum 2012. Photo: Esty Stein / PDM

In a talk on PDF's main stage at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Mitt Romney's digital director Zac Moffatt delivered a pitch for online advertising. He pointed to survey data that indicates one in three online adults — and a majority of adults at all age levels are online, according to recent Pew data — are completely ignoring "live television," focusing instead on using tools like DVR to skip over ads entirely. The result is an ever-decreasing audience for television ads, something that makes digital work more important than people seem to think, Moffatt said. Read More

In Pivot to General, Romney Campaign Seeking to Build Out Digital Staff

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, May 10 2012

Mitt Romney. Photo: Austen Hufford

For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers:The Romney campaign is advertising technology-related jobs on Mashable. (via @adamostrow)

Romney digital director Zac Moffatt says a robust internal tech staff is the new normal for presidential campaigns, but those positions weren't a priority during primary season.

"This is what people are doing online in 2012," he told techPresident Thursday morning. "This is the team that we need to build to be successful."

Oh MyMitt: Romney's Not So Excellent Online Metrics [UPDATED]

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, October 17 2011

Last Saturday was "National Call Day" for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, an all-hands-on-deck effort to rally volunteers to make calls from their homes "to share Mitt's pro-growth message and build support for the ... Read More

Romney's Digital Director on Being Senior Staff

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, June 2 2011

Zac Moffatt; video still via Targeted Victory ClickZ's Kate Kaye talks with Zac Moffatt, the digital director for Team Romney. Moffatt told Kaye about the importance of having a digital campaign lead who is an in-house ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed tuesday >

Honda Campaign Rolls Out Endorsements From Asian American Stars

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) rolled out several additional endorsements from Asian American leaders and celebrities Tuesday, with one of them vouching for his high-tech bona fides. GO

Here Are The People President Obama Hopes Will Repair American Elections

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration established by President Obama after problematic 2012 elections now has a web presence at SupporttheVoter.gov. Obama established the commission by executive order on March 28 "to identify best practices in election administration and to make recommendations to improve the voting experience." GO

After Oklahoma Disaster, Neighbors Look Online for Ways To Help

In echoes of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, social media sites and small business websites in and around tornado-wracked Moore, Okla., are full of offers of help, questions about missing pets and loved ones, and evidence that neighbors are willing to reach out to help one another in a disaster. On a single Facebook group, there's a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City promising free meals to first responders or people hit by the tornado; a mother a few hours' drive from Moore offering to open her door for children who might need a place to stay; a resident sharing a picture of a found dog and contact information for the owner to get in touch. GO

Change.org Lands $15 Million From Omidyar

Change.org capped an extraordinary few years of growth Tuesday with the announcement that it has landed a $15 million investment led by the Omidyar Network. GO

What German Politicians Think of Google Glass

The German government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel has not had the easiest relationship with Google. The company launched a public campaign against a law backed by her coalition that would require search engines to pay to show news articles in search results, with mixed results. What's more, Google has long had to navigate the privacy waters in Germany and throughout the European Union. But that has not stopped her federal minister for economics and technology, Philipp Rösler, from giving Google Glass an enthusiastic test run as he leads a delegation of German technology companies and politicians on a trip to Silicon Valley this week as part of German Valley Week. GO

Crowdsourcing Waste Management Solutions in Montenegro

For once we aren't talking about the worldwide scarcity of toilets, just good old-fashioned household waste. Montenegro has a garbage problem so bad even the tourists are complaining about it. A new mobile app sponsored by the Agency for Environmental Protection, NGO Ozon and United Nations Development Programme in Montenegro will hopefully get citizens involved in reporting illegal garbage dumps. GO

monday >

Her Majesty's Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

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

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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