GregDewar.com

Case Study: The Race to Get Lots of "Friends" and "Fans" on Facebook. If you're on Facebook for more than 5 minutes, you know how easy it is to passively express affinity for anyone, or anything. Maybe you see a friend has become a "fan" of (Not Being on Fire, ESPN, Flipping the Pillow Over To Get To The Cool Side, Batman, some cool local blog, and so on) and within a couple of clicks of the mouse, you join the bandwagon. It's fun, and it's a social "me-too" function that's an integral part of Facebook.

After Barack Obama's much-publicized efforts to collect Facebook friends, politicians and their advisors have jumped on this. Now it's common to see candidates for office engage in a "friend recruitment war," sending out repeated pleas to their supporters to "get more friends" for them, and to hit some magic target. As this desperate struggle for "more friends" continues, politicians risk looking less like capable leaders in difficult times, and more like insecure teenagers running for Homecoming King or Queen instead.

More importantly , these drives to "get more friends and fans" on Facebook miss the potential power of social networking for campaigns as a field organizing tool, not a popularity contest. Obama's efforts on Facebook were part of a larger effort that combined field work - on and off Facebook - and took advantage of the medium's novelty. Today, when Facebook is larger and more established, it's much less important if politician has thousands of "fans" on Facebook. That's particularly true if none of them do anything offline to help out the campaign effort.

However, if a campaign only has a few hundred "fans," with every one of those fans knocking on doors in their hometown, raising money, and telling their friends - on and offline - about the campaign, the candidate will be doing a lot better where it really counts - at the polls on Election Day.

If political consultants want to help their clients the most with social media, they need to look at social networking not as a gimmick, bolted on to a traditional campaign plan, but instead as an extension of their field plan, just done online.

Using Facebook (and Twitter and other social networking sites) and their many tools to identify, recruit and organize supporters online, is great. Giving them something meaningful to do, will ensure that their campaigns are more successful than the insecure teenager begging for more friends.

This article appeared in a slightly different format in the newsletter for my awesome day job. Go to their site and read all about our cool products and services.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you've not already seen the Tonight Show's "Twitter Tracker," well, you're missing out on a hilarious send-up of Twitter, particularly when used by celebrites. The exploding Twitterbirds and WWF style announcer just add to the fun.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In politics, a bad idea never goes away, especially when it is campaign gimmickry designed to boost the fortunes of a politician desperate for headlines. The problem is these silly campaign gimmicks can often end up becoming very bad, very expensive policy, and you, the citizen, end up paying the price.

The latest example has been this ongoing media barrage BART board member James Fang has been creating over his half-baked idea to use cell phones to pay BART Fares. Today's Matier and Ross detailed Fang's $4000 trip to London to go to a conference hosted by vendors of said technology. All this in addition to BART resources directed to "study" this issue at great cost. This, during a budget crisis.

But let's take a trip in the political Wayback Machine to Fang's 2006 campaign. Fang is a Republican in one of the most non-Republican parts of California. In a re-election bid against Emily Drennen, an advocate for transit and other Good Things, he had to find a way to ensure his re-election, using, of course the taxpayer-funded resources BART could offer.

The result was a completely phony "demonstration" of technology that simply does not exist in the United States (on the scale it does in other nations), with a whole slew of media on hand to "document" a completely falsified event. Naturally, in the closing days of the campaign, Fang, with a local press ready to reprint his every word like good PR people, was able to eclipse any discussion of real issues and win re-election. All based on a lie.

It should be noted that yes, you can use cell phones in Europe and Asia to make purchases of all sorts. Cell phones in Europe can be used with vending machines to buy sodas, and Japanese cell phones can show television broadcasts and so on. There's just one problem - not one US cell carrier currently supports any "pay by cell" techonlogy, nor do any other transit agencies, any vending machine companies and so on. So Mr. Fang is either a liar or a fool when he somehow suggests that magically, within a couple of years, the US will be falling in line with European or Asian standards for cell phones amongst all its cell phone carriers.

The TransLink system, which cost a ton of money and allows for more efficient fare collection with BART, MUNI, AC Transit, and Golden Gate Transit, is FINALLY almost ready to go. MUNI passengers are already finding that using a TransLink pass is easier, and it's expected to help all beleaguered transit systems with money issues. And yet Mr. Fang insists on spending scarce taxpayer dollars to go on junkets and insist on repeating his campaign gimmicks - on our dime. Worse, he's actively undermining a significant regional project the public seems to like for no other reason than his own personal political gain.

The press needs to be admonished for going along with this phony baloney gimmick during the election and not asking the tough questions instead. However, Mr. Fang should also be admonished for wasting taxpayer dollars at a time of crisis, as should BART's management for allowing this to continue. Mr. Fang's actions are no longer a matter of political disagreement, but are costing taxpayers money, and the lies and foolishness need to stop NOW.

BART riders can't afford it any more.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I sent my mail ballot in a while back and voted a nice big "NO" on all these ridiculous propositions for this "special election" next week. Most people don't know what they're about, or that there's even an election. Political nerds like me who actually tried to read this garbage found even more not to like, and voted no.

The whole concept of ballot measures at the state and local level has devolved into a joke. When the railroads ran the state and early 20th century reformers wanted to break their hold on government, the ballot measure idea was a good way to circumvent their hold on power. But today, it's a cruel joke that's making our state a laughingstock, and it may be time to pull the plug.

Today, the only people who can afford to put some crazy idea on the ballot are the wealthy special interests these things were supposed to fight. Worse, when someone gets one of these things passed, there's no accountability. Want to make up some budget busting rules for the state? Put it on the ballot and who cares about unintended consequences? Want to make up some zany law declaring San Francisco a "sanctuary city?" Go for it, and when we have illegal alien felons having their "rights" protected from the long arm of the law, well whose ass do we kick for that? No one, that's who....because it was a "vote of the people."

Worse, whenever one of these bogus things get challenged, politicians and the courts are always fearful of "overturning a vote of the people." Hey guess what? If "the people" vote for something truly stupid and unconstitutional, it should be tossed out with the garbage, because it's unconstitutional. Who cares if "the people" voted on it? "The people" barely pay attention as-is, and their only information is from a slew of political ads. Not exactly a model of democracy, I'd say.

However, I think the best way to make a point about this is....to put a ballot measure up for a vote of the people. To paraphrase Sideshow Bob, I'm aware of the irony of using a ballot measure to point out its silliness so don't bother pointing that out. Simply put, I think it's time a group of Concerned Citizens put up the craziest "advisory" ballot measure ever to point how how useless it is. (Although in San Francisco, perhaps no one would get the joke).

Anyway, here's a few ideas I'm spitballing here....feel free to come up with your own....remember we're going to use the election system to take a poll about something completely ridiculous, so the zanier the better:

-An advisory measure asking the City to consider making Alcatraz Island into a facility for the cloning of dinosaur DNA and making a world-class dinosaur zoo in San Francisco.

-An advisory measure stating that San Francisco stands as a "sanctuary city" for unicorns, rainbows, and heart shaped stickers.

-An advisory measure asking the Mayor to wear a different colored tie than those blue ones he's always wearing.

-An advisory measure declaring San Francisco's support for JJ Abrams' efforts to improve pop culture via Star Trek, Fringe, and LOST. Maybe make him an honorary mayor or something.

Anyway, you get the idea. Let's get crazy!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)